Patching Jeans Tutorial

Boys go through jeans quickly.  With 5 little boys and a limited budget, we cannot possibly afford to replace jeans as quickly as my boys can go through them.  I have had to face the fact, that in order to extend the life of the jeans in my house, I have to do a fair amount of patching.  I have done a few fun patch jobs on nicer jeans like this. . .

My boys actually love these patches and are still happy to wear these jeans to school.  I used this tutorial from make it and love it for these patches.  But, as cute as they are, they take a long time, and sometimes I just don't have it, or I am only trying to salvage them as pants to play in, so they aren't worth it.  Fortunately, my patching method, while not nearly as cute or fun, is really fast and easy.

Here's what I do:

Trim the threads around the hole.

 (something like this)

Now cut a piece of denim slightly larger than the hole on all sides.  (I have an old pair of my husbands jeans that was unsalvageable that I use for this scrap denim.)

Turn the pant leg inside out and pin the scrap piece over the opening, making sure that everything is lying smooth and flat.  Just use a couple of pins, as you will be removing them in just a minute.

Carefully turn the leg right side out again and pin the pant leg to the scrap piece of denim.  Make sure you only pin through the front of the pant leg and the scrap, not the back of the leg.

Remove the pins that you initially pinned inside the leg.

Take your jeans to the machine.  Slide the leg over the arm of the machine and stitch in small zig zag pattern over the area, starting and ending with a backstitch.  Make sure you start and end well before the hole begins and ends for added strength.  Now, when I say zig zag pattern, what I mean is, you use a straight stich on your machine, but you will stitch forward all the way across and then backstick all the way back on slight diagonals, resulting in a zig zag pattern across the patch as pictured.

 Finally, turn the pant leg inside out one last time and trim the denim scrap down, so there is nothing to flap and irritate little knees.  Just make sure that you don't trim too close to the stitching.

One last thing - - If I can get to the holes while they are still little, it usually requires a lot less pinning and stitching.  I also don't bother trimming off the threads if they are still attached at both sides like on the jeans pictured above.  I just stitch right over them and I think this results in a more cool, distressed look.  Sometimes, my boys are even happy to wear jeans that have been patched this way to school.  Distressed is in!  Yes!!!

This method really is fast and easy once you get the hang of it.  I was able to repair all of these jeans in less than an hour.