Sentence Examples:
Linen may be darned with linen or mercerized cotton.
Darning, button-hole making and hem-stitching were taught in one class.
All we need is a few tufts of chin whiskers and some politics to be full-fledged gosh-darn mossbacks.
His actual words were that he never wanted to see or hear of the darned thing again, inasmuch as it gave him a pain in the neck.
Of course, the open gold-brick schemes I knew enough to dodge, 'most of 'em (unless you count in that darn Benson mining stock), and I spotted the blackmailers all right, most generally.
Annette was not a bit dismayed at the thought of the task she had set herself; the thin, slender fingers were longing to achieve those marvelous feats of invisible darning, those dainty hem-stitched borders and delicate embroideries.
Grandmother darning stockings, Katherine trimming a hat, Ellen mixing bread or baking pies, George chopping or sawing wood, Benny building a bonfire, and like subjects, which will suggest themselves, are easy to make, and are always attractive pictures.
The character of the darning-needle is the character which a child would naturally attribute to a darning-needle, and the whole multitude of vivid personifications which fills his tales is governed by the same consistent but dimly apprehended instinct.
The white crocheted tidies on the chair-backs, elaborated with endless patience out of innumerable spools of darning cotton, lent a feminine touch to the furniture, which for an instant distracted Carraway's mental vision from the impending personality of Fletcher himself.
Here, in the great, clean, sweet, comfortable place, the busy housewife lives, sometimes rocking the cradle, sometimes opening and shutting the oven door, sometimes stirring the pot, darning stockings, paring vegetables, or mixing goodies in a yellow bowl.
The surgical operation over, Brigitte, whose qualifications as a sempstress were superior, darned up the hole in the neck of the unfortunate animal, and he was then turned loose until a fresh supply of black-puddings should be required for a similar occasion.
If I desired her undivided attention to my case, I should first remove the looking-glass, and if a consultation seemed advisable, I should wish to arm myself with a gridiron, or a darning-needle, or some other appropriate weapon, before expressing such a wish.
Sea-shells of delicate varieties can be used as necklaces or bracelets if pierced with a red-hot darning needle, or in some way bored to admit of being strung; some of those lovely, iridescent, foreign shells, strung in such a way, are greatly to be desired.
By our English women, hundreds of years gone by, among other applications of the needle, one was to darn upon linen netting or work thereon with other kinds of stitchery, religious subjects for Church-use; or flowers and animals for household furniture.
To-day you wonder how, amidst darning your stockings and patching our trousers and mending your waists, she ever found time in which to supply you with the additional regalia which, according to your pursuits of the hour, day after day you insistently demanded.
When I contemplate my wife, by my fire-side, while she either spins, knits, darns, or suckles our child, I cannot describe the various emotions of love, of gratitude, of conscious pride, which thrill in my heart and often overflow in involuntary tears.
There never had been such a hauling and overhauling of clothes, such folding and unfolding, such stitching and darning and cleansing and pressing, such dragging out and packing of heavy portmanteaus, such a getting up of shirts that should be irreproachable.
We are with difficulty persuaded that these are pictures of simple citizens, that the man, apart from the hours during which he sat to the painter, is an industrious tradesman, and the wife, glancing out so haughtily, most probably darned his stockings.
"When I contemplate my wife, by my fire-side, while she either spins, knits, darns, or suckles our child, I cannot describe the various emotions of love, of gratitude, or conscious pride which thrill in my heart, and often overflow in voluntary tears ..."
It seemed particularly pleasant to-day, with the uncertain sunlight falling through the well-darned, snowy window-curtains, the circle of friendly, shabby chairs, the worn old carpet, scrupulously brushed, the reading-table with a green-shaded lamp, and the old square piano loaded with music.
Patty was very dainty about her few patched and darned belongings; also very exact in the adjustment of her bits of ribbon, her collars of crocheted thread, her adored coral pendants, and her pile of neat cotton handkerchiefs, hem-stitched by her own hands.
We've had such a darn hard time of it that when at last, under the extraordinary circumstances which I have recounted before, we light on the almost undiluted gold of the Golden Queen, your mind is so weakened that you can't stand the strain of prosperity.
Darning was the one thing he could not do satisfactorily; and one of the men, quizzically observing his well-meant but really ludicrous attempts, at last caught up the garment and held it aloft, calling his mates' attention to it with a shout of laughter.
My two grandmothers, both wealthier than we were, were sticklers for the finest material, and some of their silk stockings (white, like all stockings) and exquisite under-garments came down to their descendants to be darned and darned as long as they would hold together.
The young Quaker was an obstinate wooer and followed her up, but his chances of success, which were never rosy, grew dimmer and dimmer as Margaret, freeing herself of shackles, gradually began to see life as a whole instead of through the eye of a darning-needle.
Relays of girls were having their hair washed in the bathroom, and others were finishing stocking darning, or various pieces of mending; tidying their drawers, putting out their clean clothes, and performing the many small duties that seemed to accumulate at the end of the week.
It had a fair-sized living room, with very masculine crash curtains, darned in brilliant colors, and rough gray walls and an old Florentine chest skillfully stuffed with the most expensive phonograph on the market, and rows and rows of beautifully bound books.
Their hammocks are woven, which must require a considerable portion of time and trouble, being done thread after thread, traversing the warp in the manner that a hole is darned in a stocking; after which they are stained with the juices of trees according to fancy.
While the little girls to the eastward were working samplers, sewing long overhand seams, hemming, and doing beautiful darning, these little girls ran about, romped, helped to take care of the next younger baby, grew up and married, no one could have told just how.
A malicious eye, it is true, might have discovered by close inspection that the brush had been too familiar with his coat and worn it threadbare, that his silk hat had been doctored to preserve its luster and smoothness, and that his gloves were elaborately darned.
Percy Reed, seated near a table loaded with needle-books, silk-winders, and a hundred little trinkets, with a cigar in his mouth, and a sock, with a little round gourd shoved into the foot of it, in his hand, was intently occupied in darning a hole in the toe.
Besides their duties in the school-room, they darned their own stockings, made their own beds, helped the servants to keep their rooms clean, and six of the elder boys were set apart to run errands and carry messages beyond the precincts of the College.
"I remember the time when my little sister died, that I rode out to the cemetery feeling that everybody in Chicago had moved away from the town to make room for that kid's funeral, everything was so darned lonesome and yet it was kind of peaceful too."
This digression upon his difficulties is already too long, or I might mention the Laird's inexperience in the art of making the worse appear the better garnishment, of hiding a darned carpet with a new floor-cloth, and flinging an Indian shawl over a faded and threadbare sofa.
Stockings and woven underwear are much worn by the rubbing on the washboard and thin places going into the washing frequently come out as holes, so that it is true economy of effort and time to "run" or darn the thin places before they are worn through.
Here, where persons of a certain condition waited (the outer being given over to servants and tradesmen), they found a lean humpbacked boy, shabbily dressed in darned stockings and a faded coat, but with an extraordinary keen pale face that at once attracted and frightened the child.
And I did this every day with very few interruptions until I could pick up any of the text-books, turn to the alphabetical index, and plow right through it, describing in detail every darned thing it mentioned; and an alphabetical index mentions a good deal.
She had changed her dress, and if Caroline Mitford had been there, she would have known certainly from the little air of festivity about her clean but faded and darned, sprigged and flowered white muslin frock that she was going to accept the invitation.
The old preacher and his wife looked more shabby than I had ever seen them, grandma's gloves more extensively darned, the elder's clothes shinier, his cuffs in all their whiteness more frayed, and there were beautifully darned places in the stiff starched bosom of his shirt.
The early productions of the art had some analogy to weaving; the patterns were stiff and geometrical, sometimes cut out of linen or separately sewed and applied to the meshed surface, but more frequently they were darned in, the stitches being counted in, as in tapestry.
The garden produce consisted of a ragged shirt and a darned pair of worsted stockings, whilst a venerable buck rabbit looked solemnly out from a hutch on one side of the doorway, and a pair of red-eyed ferrets shed their fragrance from a rough deal box on the other.
There were not many passengers to-day; the majority were mothers with their children, the latter chasing each other about the deck or clambering into all forbidden and dangerous places, the former sitting in the shade, darning or sewing or embroidering according to their station in life.
There were all kinds of purses, stuffed with all kinds of money, but mostly paper money; some, however, had gold in them, for I heard the gold jingle, and the darned things hurt you when they landed like a rock on some part of your defenseless anatomy.
Grey hair, skillfully drawn lines on the forehead, and a plain gown, with cap, little shawl, and check apron, changed her into a comfortable, motherly creature who found favor the moment the curtain went up and discovered her rocking, darning, and crooning an old song.
The mending, however, is still largely performed by his wife; indeed, the stockings are pathetically retained and their darning given an exaggerated importance, as if women instinctively felt that these mended stockings were the last remnant of the entire household industry, of which they were formerly mistresses.
She was nimble with her fingers in plying the needle, and took in hand the household linen, hemmed the sheets, attached buttons, darned holes, and put into condition all that was previously neglected, and through neglect had become ragged, and was falling to premature decomposition.
The gentlemen were not much better: some had their velvet coats worn woefully at the elbows, and the lace of their collars darned; indeed those were the best off, for there were some who had no ladies to take care of them, whose fine Flanders lace was in terrible holes.
And when I asked him why he had allowed his daughter to marry one of them, he said with such a whimsical air, that women in America did what they "darned well pleased," and that he guessed that everyone had to "work out their own problem along that line."
This woman has within her the powers and gifts of an artist; but her pencils and her colors are resolutely laid away, and she sits hour after hour darning her children's stockings and turning and arranging a scanty wardrobe which no ingenuity can make more than decent.
When her other duties were done, she resolutely sat down to the detested darn, although it would have been much pleasanter to help her sister cut out green satin leaves and quill up pink ribbon into roses for a garland to festoon the skirt of a new white dress.
The journey was a hard one on clothes, even of the stoutest materials, but by mending and darning whenever they had a chance, and by washing soiled things out at night and hanging them around the fire to dry, the Swiss managed to keep themselves fairly neat and clean.
She said, half to herself, as she crossed the room, and, craning her chin over the sleeping child at her breast, she guided the toe of her shoe under the tacked bit, stroking down the darned tatters underneath, before she straightened and trod flat the outer layer.
A maidservant, after a day of scrubbing floors and washing dishes, is darning stockings in the kitchen when she smells fire, rushes into the bedroom where the children are asleep, and carries them one by one through the flames into safety, at the cost of her own life.
He had long matted hair, beard hanging upon his breast, a wrinkled countenance, wore a slouched felt hat, an old checked-cotton shirt, and pantaloons so patched and darned, so variegated in color, that it would require much study to determine what was original texture and what patch and darn.
They are known by many ridiculous names, as "darning needles," "snake doctors," etc., but there is no harm in them; on the contrary they are to be encouraged, for they consume, especially in their larval stages in the water, a vast number of mosquitoes, gnats, and other troublesome "bugs."
Dayton, however, furnished him with a large darning-needle, which, as soon as I felt going through my skin, I thought was more like a gimlet boring into me; but, with the help of a glass of wine, I grinned and bore it, until he took a few stitches in the wound.
It was like wandering through the enchanted empty palaces of the dear old fairy-tales, except that it was not a palace at all, and the banquet spread out on the darned white cloth was of so meager a description, that at the sight the beholders flushed with a shamed surprise.
I felt it in the taste of the coffee I drank, in the quality of my cup and saucer, in the painstaking darning on my socks, in the frequency with which my room was swept, my towel changed, my books dusted "Did you notice the new soap-dish on your wash-stand?"
If the hole is to be filled in with the interlaced stitches, draw the edges together, darn beyond the thin places lengthwise of the knitted garment, making each line of stitches longer until the center of the hole is reached, then decrease in the same manner, making a diamond in shape.
There was a brown patch upon the girl's faded skirt at the knee; the shortness of the garment indicating its age to be something over three years, as well as permitting the knowledge to become more general than befitting that her cotton stockings had been clumsily darned in several places.
The doctor was amazingly shabby, in a torn and darned rough-weather sea-jacket, out at elbows and eminently short of buttons (he had been in his time the experienced surgeon carried by a passenger ship), the dirtiest white trousers conceivable by mortal man, carpet slippers, and no visible linen.
Why, the men folk around you must be all sorts of everyday folk that wouldn't matter a circumstance if the whole darn lot got lost in the fog of their own notions, and were left to hand in their checks hollering for the help they never fancied handing you.
The poor girl scrubbed the floors, polished the brights, swept the rooms and stairs, cleaned the windows, turned the mangle, and made the beds; and in the evening, when all the work was done, she would sit by the kitchen fire darning the stockings for recreation.
This darning kind of work is very closely allied to weaving, and especially the kind often seen in Coptic work, in which bands of the woof threads are purposely omitted in places, whilst the fabric is being made, in order that a pattern may be hand-woven in afterwards to take their place.
His hat was much worn, and the old gray coat in which he was buttoned up to the chin, had seen so much service that it was literally threadbare from collar to skirt, and showed numerous patches, darns, and other evidences of needlework, applied long since to its original manufacture.
Why, when he had come into that very store to buy a darning-needle a few hours ago (what a man who lived in a waist-cloth and nothing else wanted with a darning-needle he hadn't explained), it had been all the trader could do to prevent his picking up half-a-dozen odds and ends.
I should want every human being to be agreeably employed; every woman, no matter how much or how little she might have, should be occupied with something that she could put her heart into and speak to the world through her work, whether it be painting pictures or darning stockings.
Then she produced a darning-needle from somewhere (I thought of the other darning-needle), took firm hold of it, shoved it right down to the very roots of the wart, held up my hand, and placed the head of the needle in the candle flame till it was heated to a white heat.
What is the relative importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys?
It's wonderful how Roxanne's enthusiasm can throw such a magic over her shabby shoes and the little cottage with the young green vines running over the eaves and old Uncle Pomp and a darning bag full of ragged stockings, that you want to stay feeling it forever and ever.
Another, skillful with his needle, had almost finished darning a hole in his trousers; whilst in the middle of the courtyard the cook of the party had lighted a large fire, on which the evening repast was boiling in a huge pot, which exhaled a pleasant smell of bacon and cabbage.
Kitty devoted herself to blushing beautifully, and darning many rents in a short daisy muslin skirt, "which I intend to wear a great deal, because Jack likes it, and so do I," she said, with a demure look at her lover, who laughed as if that was the best joke of the season.
She screamed, as Maggie tried to release her foot from the rent in the linen sheet, a rent which the frightened woman persisted in saying she could darn as good as new, while at the same time she implored of Maggie to handle carefully her ankle, which had been sprained by the fall.
On a netted ground of rather fine thread, we have in the first place, linen stitch, in the border, worked in rather a coarser thread than the ground; then raised wheels, buttonholed bars with picots in the center, plain wheels very close together, and long ribbed bars worked in darning stitch.
These two girls had bought new stockings for all the little feet at home, that the weekly darning might be less for the mother while they were away; and had come with their own patiently cared for old hose, "which they should have nothing else to do but to embroider."
Once she sent the substantial gift of a sack of potatoes to a young husband and wife, but the present became chiefly an amusing recollection, because, not having string, she had sewed the sack with darning-wool, with the result that it burst open on the station platform before it reached its destination.
She did not turn in the toes, because some of them needed to be darned, and whoever did it would have to turn each one back to see if there were any holes in it; but she made them into pairs, folding each once, and hung them on the little clothes-horse standing before the fire.
Carroll, even if she thought the older woman's interest in soups and darning and the filling of lamps a masterly affectation, and pitied her for the bitter fate that had robbed her of home and husband, wealth and position, at the very time when her children needed these things the most.
I was a pretty child, and always very trim and neat: aunt Catherine never would have tolerated any untidiness or disorderly ways, and I regarded Thornton's plain features, much too large for his narrow face, and his untidy clothes, worn anyhow and much patched and darned, with great contempt.
On odd tables and shelves were Indian baskets woven by the girls and used for every convenient purpose from holding stockings waiting to be darned to treasuring the Sunrise Camp Record Book which now had twenty-five written and illustrated pages setting forth the history of Sunrise Camp since its infancy.
I am afraid I had hurried a little over the darning of father's socks, that I might get to the making up of my own lace ruffles for the great event of the next night, and as I was sitting there in the window, making the most of the fading daylight, he came in.
Of the stout bread-winner, buffeted about in all weathers and amid all discomforts, nobly pursuing the task of earning his living, and fortified by the recollection of a domesticated little wife, darning his stockings at home by the fire, and prepared to lavish her attentions on the weary hero in the evening.
And now they allowed the boy on account of that name to do them friendly services, and when they had got their grog ready and settled themselves comfortably on their wooden chairs, they entertained him, sitting and darning the gaping holes in their stockings, with gallows humor and adventurous lies.
Jack hardly knew why he was taking to Bessie of little frolicsome Flossie Meredith, the Irish lassie, who was not in the least like Bessie McPherson, except that she was sweet, and loving, and true, and said what she thought, and would have darned a coat or scrubbed the floor, if necessary.
One pair of socks was missing and another required darning, one flannel shirt was unwashed, a pair of white duck trousers had been left unmarked, and one pair of blue serge ditto proved slightly wider in the leg than was permissible; but everything else was in good order and of the proper uniform pattern.
The woman left them standing for a minute on the back porch, and then came out to them, bearing a cake of soap, a towel, and a pair of overalls and shirt, which, although immaculately clean, bore many patches and darns, and were deeply creased, as though they had been laid away a long time.
In these classes, besides plain sewing of every description, the girls are taught patching and darning, and the cutting and putting together of garments, and in at least one of the colleges, each girl who graduates must leave behind a garment cut and made entirely by herself, as a specimen of her skill.
And with amazing swiftness she emptied her laundry bag on the bed, covered the contents with her eiderdown, spread out two dainty sets of immaculate French underwear, and was seated with a darning-basket and a pair of stockings in her hand, before the astonished Judith could take in the significance of her actions.
This is all done with one thread which is carried in fine running stitches to the hole, then passes over and under the warp threads, and continues with running stitches at the other side of darn; turns with a tiny loop, continues with running, and again passes over and under the warp alternately.
She knew when to talk and when to laugh and when to hold her tongue; and the sight of her sitting cross-legged on the model-throne darning the Laird's socks or sewing buttons on his shirts or repairing the smoke-holes in his trousers was so pleasant that it was painted by all three.
To see him hobbling along the street in his snuff-colored coat, threadbare at the seams, and here and there neatly patched and darned, one might take him, perhaps, for a poor decent school-teacher of narrow means, but certainly not for one of the richest men in the county, as he was reputed to be.
There were about a dozen of them with a few idlers in blue cotton, patched, dirty, faded, and darned, and some of these wore queues, queues that had been slept in for about a week without attention, and they were all quite anxious to be nice to the foreign woman, and took turns in trying to make her understand.
Asked the father, half awaking at the sound of the horse's feet, and wondering that his wife was still up; but she rendered him some evasive answer, and continued darning one of the children's rent garments, telling him that she must have it done for the boy to put on in the morning.
It was whilst exploring this dismal chamber that an attendant told me that wax figures were the most improvident creatures in the world; that they ran their toes through their stockings with reckless unconcern, and that two or three people were constantly employed darning and mending the belongings of these weird beings.
I know all about grandad and all the various and sundry uncles and forbears that earned us the name of being bad; it makes darn interesting stuff to tell now and then to some of the fellows who were raised in a prune orchard and will sit and listen with watering mouths and eyes goggling.
Billy knew it too, for the next morning he gave Susan one of his shattering hand-grasps and muttered that he was "darned glad, and Coleman was darned lucky," and Georgie, who was feeling a little better than usual, though still pale and limp, came in to rejoice and exclaim later in the day, a Sunday.
The deck hands who "soldiered" by sitting on the side of their bunks when they ought to be at work toting freight, were sometimes lifted several feet in the air by the insertion of two inches of a darning needle ingeniously attached to the under side of the board bench upon which they took their seat.
There were square patches, with the patterns matched so exquisitely that you had to feel the edge before you could realize that the patch was there; three-cornered "jags" darned so perfectly with their own threads that they were invisible, and every kind of rent and tear and hole was treated in its own particular way.
There are housekeepers filling positions to-day that have never been taught to do a single useful thing correctly; they can not darn the linens, they can not sew, they can not upholster a chair, they can not wait on the sick, nor can they settle the slightest dispute without sending for the manager.
Darned if I hadn't been kind of embarrassed by her talk, knowing it would never do for me to bust in with anything bordering on the vicious, such as suggesting that if Clyde now and then went into the kitchen and helped Baby Girl with the dishes it would make a very attractive difference in him.