Essential blue jean mending method--Tutorial!

Essential blue jean mending method--Tutorial!

• 12.15.2009

I love my jeans.  I wear jeans all the time, and have favorite pairs for different moods.  The shape matters, and once you've worn a favorite pair out you can't duplicate the softness.  Anyway, I wear my jeans out, and for a long time have been expertly patching the knees and crotches of favorite pairs.  I got the idea for this method of patching holes from my roommate my first year of college, indirectly from Abercrombie and Fitch.  You know those "destroyed" jeans that the typical dad insults at family reunions, making snarky remarks about how they cost twice as much as the new ones but they're already worn out?  Lots of brands sell destroyed jeans with paint spots, worn holes, and patched holes.  Not the greatest purchase for everyday wear, but the look is acceptable and sometimes you really want to hang on to those favorite jeans, so it's nice to have the option of creating your own.

How to Mend Holes in Jeans!

Here's a photo tutorial of how to do this on a pair of jeans with a gaping hole:

• Assess the damage.  Here's a pair of my fiance's jeans that wore a hole in the butt.

• Collect your interfacing.  I recommend the nicer Pellon type, the polyester stuff, not the papery stuff.  I save small scraps of it (you buy it by the yard but this is one of the things it's worth it to save pieces of when you're done using it on a project!).

• Turn the jeans inside out and check out the inside of the holes.

• Cut a piece of interfacing approximately the size of the holes and lay it over them.

• Set the iron on the correct setting for the fabric (cotton) and iron the interfacing down, trying to cover the whole area.

• When I ironed the patch on, the interfacing sort of shrunk away from part of the hole, so I added a wedge to cover better.

• Turn the jeans right side out and position them under your presserfoot.  This mending method requires no hand sewing, yay!  It is pretty awkward to get the pants in the right position, depending on the size.  These are big man jeans so it's not too hard.

• Here's the fun part.  Sew forward/backward/forward/backward.... a million times, over the hole.  I usually make big triangular zigzags over the gap and then go back to the beginning and make denser lines.  See here we are, partially done:

• As you sew, the feed dogs pull the thin interfacing toward the rest of the fabric, like stitches pull together an open wound.  So although the bottom hole has a big gap in it, it will be fixed when I stitch over it.  I pretty much keep my finger on the backstitch button this whole time.

• Now flip them inside out and see what it looks like on the back.

• In this case I didn't cover the whole area of the interfacing, and although it claims to be machine washable, it will peel up after a few wearings.  So I chose to sew around the edge even though the stitches will show a little through the fabric.

• Now you're done!  Flip them right side out, and done!

I have some good and some bad examples of this technique on my absolute favorite pair of jeans.  It's pretty ridiculous how many times I've patched them.  I used blue thread on a lot of these patches so it's almost invisible, although it gets pretty thick when patches overlap.  See?

I know, you're thinking, "Suzannah, just get some new jeans!" But...Gap doesn't make this cut anymore!  Jean-patching is a very important skill to have, when sometimes it's one hole that makes the difference between the Goodwill pile and the favorite pile.  Yay for mending!

Update:

• Check out my follow-up tutorial on how to use this method when the holes are in the knees
• See how I used this method on a pair of casual "boyfriend" jeans