The Right Way to Darn


Have you ever belonged to a sewing club? If not, try to start one and see how much fun there is in it. The club should meet either on Friday or Saturday afternoon, after the school work is finished. Every girl should bring her stockings to darn and another piece of work, so that when the darning is over she will have something to work on. If there are more than four in the club it is a very hard thing to keep up. Three is the ideal number for it. It is better to have a small number—three, for instance. A large club is apt to be distracting, but three or four little girls, with the right helpful spirit, will find such meetings very instructive and entertaining.


II
BACK-STITCHING, OVER-CASTING, CREASING A HEM AND HEMMING, ROLLING A HEM, FRENCH HEMMING, SEWING ON TAPES AND HOOKS AND EYES

Fig. 9. The right way to hold your scissors

Stitching is witching," the song book says, and it is true, for after we know that stitch there are a hundred and one things we can do. Some people call it back-stitching and we must try to remember that, so that we shall understand of what they are talking. Get mother to give you a piece of material to practise on that has a stripe in it. Now take your scissors ([Figure 9]) and cut out two three-inch squares. Baste the two squares together a quarter of an inch from the edge. Hold the square over the first finger of the left hand ready for the back-stitching. Let the basting run up and down over your finger. Start from the top and make a small stitch backward, on the right side of the material, instead of forward as you did in running ([Figure 10]). Pass the needle under until you have a stitch twice as long on the wrong side as that on the right. Take the next stitch backward close to the end of the last one on the right.