Mending Jeans

An aside, even before I start the post:  because of multiple google accounts, I get photos into this particular blog by downloading them and then re-uploading them . . . so as I was getting ready to pull this post together, I downloaded a folder called "mending-jeans", which compressed to "mending-jeans.zip".  Too funny!  I'm not mending the zippers, but still . . . 

Inkling brought a friend to brunch, partly so the friend could have waffles with us, and partly because said friend didn't know it's possible to mend jeans.  We three all seem to get the holes in the same places (inside thighs).  So we got to do some collaborative fixing.   Here's my how-to:

One, gather materials.  

Sewing machine, pins, scissors, and scraps of denim 
from previously sacrificed jeans.

Two, pin a scrap over the hole, but on the inside of the jeans.  Make sure the scrap and the jeans lie flat.

On the first pair, I pinned on the inside of the jeans, by the scrap. 
Sometimes I prefer pinning the other (good) side.  

Three, turn the jeans right-side out, and make sure the patch is in the right place and there's no bunching

The pins (for this first pair) are on the other side,
but you can see them poking through.
The patch is much bigger than the hole;
eventually I'll cut the excess away.

Four, stitch around the hole itself with a zig-zag stitch, to help reduce fraying, . . . 

. . . and then sew around an even larger circle/square, so that the patch is well-attached to still-strong pieces of the jeans.

Five, Remove the jeans from the sewing machine, and trim the thread.  I then use pinking shears to cut the excess pieces of scrap off the back.

On darker jeans, you can see the white stitching,
so maybe use a darker thread. 
(However, I've found that because of where this hole is,
it's harder to see while you're wearing them).

If the hole is large or there's a bunch of weak material (as on the second pair we repaired), I sew back and forth with a waffle pattern, to attach the patch to the existing material more thoroughly.  

If you look carefully, you can see the waffle pattern.
It's hard to see the stitching here, which is good, really. 
On pale jeans, white thread hardly shows.

And, done.