Make Your Own Darning Looms

Ive got a couple of commercially made Darning looms from the early 1900s.

They came with a flat darning mushroom and you secure the mushroom inside your garment and the loom outside of the mushroom with elastic bands.

They make darning much easier because you use the hooks to help you thread your needle back and forth but I really wanted something that I could make a smaller guage weave with and sometimes I want to be able to darn a bigger area than can be made with the little old fashioned looms.

So I decided to make some of my own

Have now added stages but the last pic also has the basics

No sizes are given as it all depends on what you want.

My small loom has 14 hooks over 1 1/12 inches

The big one has 22 hooks over 3 inches

Compared with the 2 old fashioned looms which have

9 over 1 1/2 inches

14 over 2 inches

To use them, you put the mushroom inside your thing to be mended. Secure with an elastic band.

Now position your new loom so it sits with the needle hooks above the hole or thin place.

Using a second elastic band, secure the loom to keep it from falling off.

Now take a stitch under and to the right of left of your hole and thread the thread up and hook it over the first needle.

Now down in a straight like and make another stitch then up to the next etc till you have vertical threads going up and down over the area.

Now make a stitch at the bottom left beside the threads , push your needle loops to the opposite side and feed the needle and thread through the threads , you should be able to see every other thread due to the needles all being on one side.

At the end of the row, make a stitch and then push the loops the other way and thread the thread back again pushing it down to neaten the last row.

The needles can be wiggled a bit to make it easy to see that you are going through the right ones.

Tips when making

I put a piece of spare wire through the loops on my bigger loom as sometimes they were getting caught on each other and that solved the problem.

Leave about an extra 1cm either end of the comb to allow for the loops to lay slantwise.

Use a bit of polystyrene packing foam or some plastecine as a proptotype before making your melty plastic pieces to help get the dimensions,

If you dont have a mushroom you can use a small cardboard box, a ball, light bulb, small bowl, piece of wood, bottom of a bottle.

Use a long needle for the darning.

How they perform

These looms do make quite a fine guage darn comparable with a thick silk stocking.

They arent as perfect as the oldy worldy 'speed weeve' looms but being able to make them yourself means you can customise the width or guage.

Mine both look really crude but they work really well.

To see people using various old world darning looms, search for videos of 'speed weve' or 'freddo darning loom'

You need

• Wire or hair grips (bobby pins)
• The hairgrips are better as they are flat so add a bit more of a weaving loom effect when you push on the loops.
• 2 Combs that will allow the wire or grips to be inserted loosely through the teeth with very little side movement
• I used 2 wide toothed combs for my wide loom and a narrow thinning comb for the small loom
• Cut them to the width you need with 1cm extra either end..
• Meltable plastic beads for the support for the combs and pins. I used polymorph
• Pliers to bend the wire or pins, needle nosed are good

Also Useful

• Spare bits of wire
• Hot air gun
• Cork mat or heat proof baking parchment
• Packing foam/ Polystyrene
• Plastecine or similar

You need to have metal hooks or Needles to hook your thread around to make the darn .

I first tried Copper wire from some old spare Power Cable . The thick kind you use for installing ovens or adding new power sockets is ideal as the wire is really stiff.

On my larger loom I used hair grips which I think are called Bobby Pins in the USA which are already straighter and have a useful curve midway which is just right to get the loop shape. They also are a little bit flat so help with lifting the second thread when pushing left and right on the loops.

You need to have the business end of your hooks curved so a thread can be held in place and I found pointed pliers were good for wrapping the copper wire end into a hook shape.

There needs to be a loop about 3cm or so away from the hook for the manouevering part.

On the bobby pins, the half way point already has a loop so it is easy to hold them in pliers and bend the legs up at 90 degrees

You need some sort of grid to allow your hooks to swivel but not flap from side to side.

First I tried plastic canvas which you can bend up and gives conveniently space holes but the holes were too far apart for my attempt to make a finer guage.

So I looked for combs.

For the finer guage small loom I found an old thinning comb (the kind that holds a razor blade for hair cutting) which had teeth small enough to allow the copper wire to slot in and swivel but not slew sideways. There are usually two sides to these little combs so I was able to use one bit for each side of the track.

You could most likely use a fine toothed hair comb just as well but I didnt have one to hand at the time.

For the wider loom with the bobby pin hooks,I found a standard wide toothed comb was perfect.

You may need two the same to get enough teeth if you are using a comb with both kinds of teeth.

You only need enough length to hold your desired amount of hooks plus about 1cm each end.

Cut the comb a bit long just till you have tested the fit.

Try the hooks for size with one comb above the loops and the other below so the loops are in the track between them..

Make your base piece from Meltable plastic as this is easy to embed the combs in.

It needs to be longer than your cut off comb, About half as wide as the hooks are long and deep enough to take the teeth of the combs minus the little gap for the bobby pins /wire to be able to swivel.

You can make one of polystyrene foam packing first to test for size as the combs will just press right in easily.

Once you have your size worked out , you need to position the tracks by softening the plastic .

Heat it with a hot air gun or dip that half in boiling water . It wont need to go completely clear, just enough to become movable,

The tricky part..

You need to position one comb, the back one is best and slot in all your needles using the straight end.

Working quickly, you must position the front comb to correspond and also slot the hooks in so they lie parallel with one another and fit the corresponding teeth..

The loops should all be between the two tracks of and all facing the same way.

It isnt critical how far apart the combs are just so long as the loops can flop one way then the other.

An Easier way

The very best way to do this is to work upsidedown. Position both combs and hold them parallel with plastecine/clay or just polystyrene(shove them in hard ,smooth side down), fit in the hooks as described, remember the hooks and loops need to hang down not up, as its upsidedown.

Now Just take your softened plastic base and position it over the teeth of the two combs and push until almost the whole of the teeth are in the plastic.

Whip it over and waggle the loops a bit back and forth to make sure they dont get stuck while the plastic hardens.

You can soften it a bit if any do and get waggling till they are free and the plastic has rehardened.

You should be able to push the loops and they all should fall to one side like dominoes, then push the loop back and they should all go the other way.

When they are uppermost, the hooks should also be uppermost.

If you find the loops try to catch each other , thread a bit of stiff wire through all of them and bend up the two ends. This will act as a sort of inner track and stop them catching and it also means they wont fall completely flat and become unreponsive.

Its all a bit trial and error at this point and you might find you need to add a bit more melty plastic for end stops .

It all depends on your design.

Once its sorted you can see the reason for the loops.

When right , the left most threads of your darning thread will be more obvious and when left, the right most are more prominent.

For me the bobby pins did work slightly better as they are a flat wire not so rounded but both kinds of hooks worked to some extent.

If your pins are very close, it helps to waggle the straight bits above the comb tracks to help you see one from another.

On my first loom , I made legs to fit around my darning mushrooms.

One of my mushrooms is just a flat disc with a gap for elastic so looks like a cookie.

The other looks like a wooden mushroom.

This is why meltable plastic was chosen.

You can take your mushroom and holding the loom to it, position your hooks over the top part so they rest on it.

Then take a bit of the melted stuff and add it to each side so they come behind the top and sides of the mushroom.

It doesnt need to be a tight fit, its just to allow you to be able to position the loom .

When its cold and hard, put it back and see how you can hold it to the mushroom with elastic.

You might need to melt a track in the plastic of the loom to take some or add a sticking out bit.

It really is very dependant on your choice of 'mushroom'

Remember you can use anything as a mushroom , it needs to be hardish and small enough to fit into or behind the material being darned.

On my second loom, I made it Flat where it fits a mushroom and instead of a curved or round mushroom ,I can sit it on a small box or a piece of wood. So instead of adding legs , I made sort of horns at the top above the straight end of the needles so elastic will stay on.

Anyway this part of the make is entirely dependant on your needs and the meltable plastic makes it very easy to try different things till you find a working configuration.

You are aiming for being able to position your hooks above the hole, have the elastic hold the loom secure enough that you can let it go without the loom falling off and be able to add your darning threads without having to think about it all slewing around..

These looms work well .

They arent as perfect as the old world looms but they do make darning easier as you can see where you are in the darn. You can leave off darning and come back to them later without going wrong when you take it up again.

The old commercial looms are machine made and so still superior