Patching up those jeans part II

Over the summer, I posted about patching jeans. Although they worked great, my knobby knee-ed boy has now holed up four pairs of school jeans, leaving him down to one or two good pairs. I love creative and fun patches, but I wanted to tone it down a bit for school. I had bought a bunch on sale, because his school dress code is either school uniform (only way he can wear shorts) or jeans without holes. So it was time to patch them up so that I wasn't having to wash every other day.

My husband was fortunate enough to have such a sweet grandma that would always patch his jeans up for him. Even when we were dating, he would work on cars, rip his pants out and send them down to Grandma, who would patch them up so sturdy and nice for him again. I thought I would patch Jaden's up using the same method that she used.

The challenging part between doing my husband's pants and doing my son's is the size difference. It is a LOT easier to put pants on through the sewing machine from an adult than it is a skinny pant leg. I wrestled and sweated and pricked fingers and groaned, but I did it!

Here's how the whole process works:

Gather thread, recycled denim for patches, sewing machine, scissors ands jeans to mend.

I chose a bunch of different colors so I could match the thread up a bit to the jeans I was mending. The bobbin color doesn't matter if you only sew on the right side

The denim that you are using as patches also do not matter in color because it will be inside of the jeans, unseen.

Now cut a patch out thats bigger than your hole:

turn jean leg inside out, and pin patch over hole, making sure it covers all the hole and the weak material.

Turn leg right side out. This is what you should now see:

Next, place pant leg on machine. Its tough, and it's tight. I don't know if  I would have been able to do a pair smaller than his 5t pants.

Set machine to a zig zag stitch and stitch in rows as close as possible above, over and below hole. Your finished product should look like this:

Turn leg inside out again, remove pins and carefully trim patch.

Finished! Congrats! You just saved yourself at least 10 (for a cheap pair) dollars! And really, with the right color thread, its a great fix. Its hardly noticeable, especially when caught early. Here's the first one I did, the hole is a lot larger and the thread is lighter, but it still works. Its also super messy sewing. Doesn't have to be perfect! But I do think this shows the final results better when knowing how to sew the patch on.

The other two ways that I mended his jeans were to take large denim patches, cut into squares and sew on front as typical patches. I did it in a different color to give it a bit of variety.

The last way I mended his jeans was on the bottom of the pant leg. I buy his jeans long and cuff them so thats he can grow into them, but then he walks on them anyway and puts big holes in them. I cut the frayed and holey mess and sewed in a new hem using another old pair of jeans that had to match in order to blend in. Good as new!

Doing this entire project saved a pair of old navy jeans, two children's place jeans and a pair of target jeans.  Success!

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