Denim repairs

Apparently not much sewing done in the past couple of weeks. I guess I’d rather stay under the kotatsu than stand in front of my sewing machine feeling cold. I managed to finish a small mending project though.

Sometime ago I posted about repairing the pocket lining on my husband’d jeans. The jeans had since started showing holes on the crotch area. I could have made a new pair for my husband, but it seems that once you start fixing something, it become more difficult to just throw it away. So I googled ‘denim repairs’ and stared at the images in my screen.

Something about a piece of clothing that got repaired, patched, and darned over and over again stroke a chord in my heart. I think it is very beautiful and full of love. When something is broken, you try repairing it instead of just throwing it away. It is love. And it applies to a lot of things, not just denim repairs.

With my newfound philosophy, I went about repairing my husband’s jeans crotch. The holes are still quite small, but they would go bigger in no time. I ironed a couple of thin interfacing patch behind the holes. You can see the zigzagged raw edges on the inside. I didn’t have a serger three years ago and used zigzag stitch to finish all my raw edges.

Mending jeans Mending jeans

Mending jeans
Fixed!

Darning the holes was quite simple. I used three step zigzag stitch on my sewing machine with wider width and short length, in this case 5 in width and 0.5 in length. Then I simply went over the holes back and forth until they closed up. I also did the same to the other side of the crotch as the thread on this area had weakened.

The back and forth stitches creates a new layer of ‘fabric’ that cover the holes. I think the result is quite good! The color of the thread could have been matched better next time, but it’s not bad for my first denim repair job.

Next, I went to the back pocket area. My husband keeps his train card pocket in his right back pocket and the friction has created several holes there.

Obviously I can’t use my sewing machine to fix these holes, unless I unpicked the stitches, fixed the holes, and attached the pocket back. Actually I had disassembled the whole front pockets and assembled them back when I fixed the pocket lining, but this time I wanted to use other techniques.

Mending jeans

I found some images of traditional mending where the holes are patched by hand. So I cut some denim patches and attached them to the back of the holes using several running stitches. I kinda like the finished result, although next time I might use thicker thread for it.

Mending jeans

I really enjoyed making these repairs that I planned to keep darning and patching these jeans until they become too ragged to be worn anymore. One might think that I was so unselfish for doing all of these, but I know that it was all for my own amusement!

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