Save your favourite jeans. By mending them, you extend their life. Celebrate and embellish them with a visible mend and the imperfect stitch. If your jeans no longer fit or you just don’t want to wear them anymore, keep them for cutting-out patches. Ideal for mending jeans.
Mending jeans can be quite simple or very elaborate; it’s up to you. You could just use one type of stitch, a running stitch. The other two stitches that would be useful and are easy are a) cast-over stitch and b) blanket stitch.
A common repair is patching or mending jeans with a rip in the knee.
Remove the loose frayed threads.
Place a contrasting denim patch (bigger than the hole) underneath. Turn in the edges and pin.
You could use any colour patch made from any sturdy fabric, such as a red patch with red stitching.
The above image gives you an idea of the size of this patch compared to the size of the rip. The other thing to consider is not just the size of the rip but also the area around it. For example – is it worn quite thin? The area around this repair was sound. I had a repair to do where the area around the rip was worn a bit thin. So the patch was a lot bigger to strengthen the whole area with the stitching covering a larger area too. Please see the image B below
A) I used cotton embroidery thread and a simple stitch. A running stitch in two different directions for the crosses, easy blanket stitch to secure the edge of the rip.
Similar to image B below, you could skip turning the edge, leave it raw, and secure it with a straight running stitch.
B) Besides the rip, quite a large area around it had become a little thin. The patch with the stitching strengthens the area, extending the life of your jeans. I used red cotton yarn and a simple running stitch. For this repair, I left the edge raw, unlike image A.
C) If you prefer, you can mend the same type of rip in a different way by placing the patch/es on top instead of underneath, securing and strengthening with a simple running stitch.
Tip: Even though I have been sewing for decades, I still like *tacking things into place. I find it so much easier and quicker to stitch without pins in situ. I find, the thread gets caught up in the pins all too often. I personally find this annoying, when the whole process is meant to be relaxing and fun. For this reason I like tacking my pieces into place. *Tacking – large, loose running stitches made with ordinary sewing thread that are removed when your work is finished.
Mend-Darn Patch a frayed edge of a front pocket on a pair of jeans.
