CROCHET ELBOW PATCHES

I am gradually working through my hubby’s winter woollies, ready for him to wear as the weather gets colder. Each year in the spring, I wash all our jumpers and put them away ready for the following winter, but I don’t always get around to attending to any repairs at that stage. It’s a job for the colder evenings. My hubby has a lot of jumpers and he’s pretty hard on them – he is left-handed, and when he writes, he always rests his right elbow on the desk. He must have really sharp elbows because he goes through the sleeves for a pastime! He also often catches the jumpers on things and either pulls threads (easy to remedy – you just pull the loose thread to the back with a crochet hook) or makes holes, which are a bit more trouble to mend, and I don’t always manage to do them invisibly.

He has one really old jumper which I had considered really ought to be consigned to workshop or gardening wear only, but when I examined it again, I thought I could give it a new lease of life. It’s a really nice one with dark muted colours, mostly navy blue with a slightly lighter blue and tiny touches of dark red. One of the cuffs was coming away, and there was a hole along the neckline as well, and one or two other minor places needing mending, and none of these was much trouble to put right. However, this was the state of the right elbow:

Really not good – in a terrible state!

I can’t remember who it was who gave me the idea of crocheted elbow patches, but it was shortly after we got married and that was over 30 years ago. My sister always used to laugh at them, as I would crochet concentric rings using scrap wool in colours to match the jumper as closely as possible, and she said they looked like targets!

Here are the ones I made for this particular jumper.

I didn’t have a lighter blue of exactly the right shade; the colour I had is a bit lighter, but I kept it to a minimum, making these patches predominantly navy blue. I deliberately left a nice long tail with which to sew them on, but these tails proved too short so I had to add some more.

Even though the left sleeve of the jumper was intact, I made a patch for that as well, because a single patch looks really peculiar!

I began on the damaged sleeve. Here is the patch sewn in place.

The hole on the inside of the sleeve was still open, and had to be stabilised to prevent my hubby catching his hand on it when putting on the jumper. The patch more than adequately covers it on the outside so the whole area is stable, but inside, I needed to darn the edges of the hole onto the reverse side of the patch. This is the result.

Everything is nice and secure now, even if a bit messy!

Here is the completed repair job.

Hard to get the colour just right in artificial light but you get the idea.

Target practice!

One advantage of these crochet patches is that they are fairly thick – crochet comes out thicker than knitting. They make a nice soft pad to rest one’s elbow on, and should easily outlast the jumper! In fact, in the past, when one of his jumpers has come to the end of its life, I have been known to remove the patches and use them on another jumper if the colours were OK. I’ve got a plain pair of bottle green ones in my mending box that have been there for years, waiting for a new home!

I notice that the hem welt of this jumper is a bit baggy looking. I may need to run some shirring elastic through the ribbing if it looks floppy on him when he wears it. This jumper must be at least 20 years old and it’s nice to have been able to give it a new lease of life, good for another 20 years, perhaps, if the Lord tarries!!