Visible patching / darning on a blanket

Date:
What I did:
closeup of navy blue blanket with a large (several feet) rip. blanket is hanging on drying rack outdoors

Before: my clients' soft cashmere blanket had a rip that was several feet long.

closeup of variegated orange darning on a gray patch over a navy blue blanket

After: here's a closeup view of my mend. I patched the blanket with an old gray cashmere scarf. Then, to further reinforce the mend and add some color, I did visible darning with variegated orange embroidery thread.

gray cashmere scarf hanging on drying rack outside brown shingled wall

Before: here's the scarf that I used as patch material. Like the blanket, the fabric was torn and worn in places, hence the need to do additional darning to prevent further raveling. I normally try not to use worn fabric as patches, because I want my patches to last as long as possible. In this case, however, the clients wanted a very visible mend, so using a worn patch and then darning it was a way to make the mend more visible.

less visibly mending navy blue blanket (matching lines of stitching) hanging outside a brown shingle house on a drying rack

After: Actually, though, the mend I did was really a hybrid between visible and less visible. One side of the blanket had the gray patch with orange darning. The other side, pictured here, had just thin lines of navy machine stitching.

navy blue blanket with a rip several feet long, hanging outside on a drying rack

Before: here's a more zoomed out "before shot" of the blanket.

navy blue blanket with visible mend: long gray patch with small bit of orange darning, hanging outside on a drying rack

After: and here's a more zoomed out "after" view of the visibly mended side of the blanket.