So one day a girl walks into her wedding cleaver.
Oh wait, there's no joke there. I walked into our cleaver (doesn't everyone get a cleaver for a wedding present?) and it cut a few tiny threads in my favorite, favorite jeans which I knew would turn into a full fledged hole in a few days.
And lo, it did.
So I decided I should finally
learn to mend.
Before I started on my favorite pants ever, I, of course, practiced on things I didn't care about: an old pair of sweatpants, ripped jeans I don't wear anymore, a zip hoodie I only wear to work, and my husband's pants.
I started off with some ripped jeans I never wear any more. They are pretty faded already, so finding a shade to match would be kind of hard... so i went contrasting.
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| ripped jeans back |
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| patch close up |
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| ripped jeans knee |
This zip hoodie has probably reached the end of it's life. I've had it for a good 6-7 years, it's thin, there are holes I don't think I can patch, and should probably be thrown out. I didn't mind the ones near my wrist, but the one on my elbow was noticeable to the point that I had a customer (at the job where I have a company shirt and the only dress code is no jeans) comment on it. I'm pretty happy with the results. I had to back the elbow patch with scrap (which was black/white check) to cover the hole, but I don't mind. I think the other elbow is about to go though....
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| wrist |
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| elbow patch |
So finally I felt comfortable working on my own jeans. I picked out some some thread I thought would match, but I think I matched it to a slightly less faded part of the jeans, because it doesn't blend in like I thought it would.
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| The cleaver hole! |
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| cleaver hole close up |
First off, I cut a piece of interfacing to slightly cover the hole and ironed it onto the inside of the jeans.
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| interfacing ironed on to inside of jeans |
Then I used my machine to run over and over over and over the hole until it was covered with stitches (I used the default stitch length). I didn't get any pictures of that step, but
this blog post has great pictures of the process.
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| the patch! |
My end result doesn't look exactly like hers, but I'm 100% positive I'll
end up doing this again and I'll get better at it. I love that this saved my jeans! I don't feel comfortable wearing them to work any more (not the job where I wear the patched hoodie, the job where I can wear basically wherever I want as long is it is neat and not revealing), but my mom got me an early birthday present of this same cut so I have jeans to wear to work again! So now I have patched jeans for every day wear and nice jeans for work/date night! It's a win-win situation. I'm very happy.
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| It doesn't disappear, but it doesn't scream "patched!" either |
