Darning a Ballerina Scarf

This sweet vintage scarf was given to my niece by a dear friend.  It's a soft synthetic fabric, much worn, much loved.  Seeing numerous holes, and knowing how holes tend to grow when children play with them, I decide to mend this before putting it in her dress-up chest.  

The scarf needs two things: the holes mended and the tattered edges re-hemmed.

The whole scarf! Such a charming 1950's pattern.

Here I pick the threads I'll use to darn the holes. The pink for the girl's head is not a good match, but it's all I had.

I'm told that when stone-carving, you should always chisel into the strength of the stone.  I.e. when deciding which direction to angle your chisel, you should point it so the force of your blows is toward the strong spots in the stone.  Otherwise, you could shear off giant chunks of weak stone when you only wanted to remove a wee bit.  Darning is the opposite.  You need to start from a place of strength and send your darn out into the weaker or missing areas.  I guess that's because when stone-carving you're removing things and when darning you're adding them on!  When removing things, you have to think about the strength of what's left behind; when adding things you have to think about the strength of what you're building on.  On this lady's foot, I start by darning her leg, which was mostly there, because I can attach my threads to the existing fabric.  Then when I get to the red background, I can attach that thread to the newly darned leg: 

Here I'm using a slightly unusual stitch to do her leg: instead of half-hitches over the floater thread, I'm just overcasting.

Finished and en pointe! Later I use black thread to put her criss-cross straps back on.

PROGRESS PICTURES (SLIDESHOW)

FINISHED: CLOSE UP AND ZOOMED OUT PICS!

The left column below shows close-ups of some darned areas.  The right column shows the complete figures, so you can see the darning in context.  The lady whose face I re-made looks like she's blushing!  Too bad I didn't have the right pink... but I think I did a good job re-making her expression.  

(I wish now I'd outlined her skirt in black thread...)

WHEN BOREDOM HITS...

​This bit of red covered the biggest hole, and was quite boring to darn... same stitch over and over again... so I alternated between corded single Brussels and plain single Brussels, creating a striped effect.  Sometimes that happens while mending!  I once mended my brother's jeans with patches on the knees embroidered to say "Yo soy el hombre más interesante del mundo"!

When the darning was finally done and the edges hemmed (I used a Calvin Klein hem), the result was stronger and prettier.  I was quite pleased with myself for giving this old scarf more time to be played with.  I hope my niece likes it.  She's very into ballerinas and princesses right now!