#jeans repair

[milkweedman]

hello! need help learning how to do a thing and it's your area of expertise so im squirrelling into your ask box (dad joke, sorry.) ANYWAY

i have a lot of jeans that i really really like. however, my most worn jeans tend to, uh. rip in the seat after some time. either near the ass, or at the crotch. this is super irritating, and i don't like tossing the jeans just because of that but i have no idea how to fix them or what to do about this.

i vaguely remember you posting on here about jeans wear and tear as well. sorry if im asking you something that you have already answered, but just wanted to know - what's a good way of mending jeans ripped in the crotch area?

better yet, how do i reinforce my jeans that are showing the warning signs of ripping at the crotch?

My jeans literally just ripped a couple days ago and ive been wearing sweatpants to work out if laziness, so you have good timing 🐿

There might be many ways to do this (and there's definitely NEATER ways to do this) but here's how I fix mine:

They just sort of wore right through. Luckily I was able to catch it before they started ripping too. The sooner you catch a hole the better--and noticing before it rips is best.

You will need a sewing needle (for jeans I like the shortest sharpest needle with a small eye but use whatever needle is comfortable), scissors, a strip of scrap fabric, and some thread. Ideally thread in the same color as your jeans, but I'm using one that will stand out so you can see the repair. Also, nobody will see this later so it doesn't really matter. Pins will also help keep things neat but aren't strictly necessary.

The strip of fabric should be big enough to cover the entire area that wears out, doubled over, on this leg. You can of course just patch the hole, but then you'll grow a new hole a centimeter to the left, so its less work to just do this now.

For preventative measures (sewing a patch on before there is a hole) the process is exactly the same. Just patch the area you know will wear out.

Step 1: turn the pants inside out. fold your patch and pin it in place. We want a doubled patch because a single layer might wear through as well. If you don't have pins, you can use a spare needle or just set it over the repair site.

Like so. If you want these to look nice, keep everything neat and straight. I just want these mended and don't care how it looks one iota, so mine will be messy.

Step 2: thread your needle with doubled thread. A single thread can and probably will wear through here.

Step 3: put your non dominant hand down the leg you're fixing. Your hand should be under the patch supporting while you sew. If you have an embroidery hoop or something leg-sized to put there to hold things taut, that's even better.

Step 4: start sewing the patch down. First we just want to secure it before we do any reinforcing. You could use any stitch here ( whipstitch would probably be good, backstitch is good as well) but I just use a simple running stitch. Go around the entire patch, removing pins if present as you go. Keep your stitches loose here, or at least not tight.

Step 5: reinforcing ! This part can be done on either side, and the front is going to look way neater than the back. If this is in matching thread I'd go ahead and work on the inside because the messy outside won't be seen. If it's contrasting thread you may want to work on the outside, so that at least you have a good pattern. I don't care either way, so I'll work on the inside as it's a little easier. Like I said, this repair really won't be seen when wearing the pants, so the aesthetics aren't very important imo.

To reinforce, I will stitch plus signs/x's over the entire patch. You can do them one at a time or sew all the horizontal lines, then sew vertically to intersect. It's up to you, I like doing them one at a time though.

Yes, they're very bad. Yes this will still extend the life of these pants several months at least. Yes it would be even more effective if I took the time to be neater.

On top on the right image is the patch I did on the other side when they started shredding 5 or 6 months ago. The fabric on the front is only just now starting to fail again, so they will need another round of mending. I will probably extend the patch down the leg a little but mostly just sew more. When you add a layer of thread over fabric, now you have to wear through all of the thread before you start wearing down the fabric again. That's largely how these patches work.

A much much neater and more aesthetic form of this basic idea is sashiko sewing. It's a great way to mend things like jeans (I just don't care about my jeans being anything other than usable so I save my effort and creativity for where I will enjoy it).

Here's the front. I highly doubt anyone will ever see the yellow but I sharpied it black (can also do blue on most shades of blue jeans) and now it stands out less.

One last thing--if, when you look at the front again, you see there are some damaged areas standing proud, sew over those until they have compacted back down and are smooth again. This is important--whatever stands the highest will wear first. So your repairs should be sitting on top, standing higher than the damaged fabric. Otherwise this is all for naught.

Some tips:

A canvas fabric is better. Go for something thick and with some weight to it if you can--immobilizing the repair site will also help some with how long the repair will last.

Similarly colored thread will render this almost invisible. Almost invisible means hard to work on... so make sure your patch is a different color so you're not mending like black thread on black fabric. Save your eyes.

Smaller stitches are better if you have the time/coordination. Large stitches can snag in the wash and also aren't as effective here.

That said, chicken scratch looking garbage will absolutely still make your pants wearable again, as you can see.

If the physical act of moving the needle is going terribly, it's because it's the wrong needle for the job. For jeans, you want a short needle as thin as possible with a small eye. I switched halfway thru this mend because I found a better needle and it was way easier after that.

That's all I got, good luck with your pants ! I usually can double or triple my jeans life this way

[theicekat]

Saving because my wife wants me to repair stuff. lol

"Don't just throw ripped jeans away, you can repair them using these 10 cute Visible Mending techniques!!" unfortunately my friend the first point of failure for every single pair of jeans i have owned in my life has been the Crotch and Ass. Knees: fine, cuffs: fine; but 3 years in, and all that stands between the world and my astronaut-patterned taint is 0.5µm of denim worn so thin that every squat threatens to tear it to shreds like wet toilet paper. If the Tiktok craft community could figure out a way to resurrect jeans afflicted in such a way that doesn't involve adding a whole ass buttpatch like some sort of inverse assless chaps situation then that'd be great

[a-strawberry-mouse]

That's 4 shades of yellow!

The closer the stitches, the more damaged the fabric. The farther apart the stitches, the less damaged the fabric.

Pleasant, pleasant to look at!

Heck, once I'm done I may casually add stitches to this as a slow stitching project.

Jeans guy asked if I would make this a Theseus ship.

Honestly?

That is a goal for me. To repair things so much that there's little to nothing left of the original. Making it both the old object and an entirely new object! I'm pretty happy that my vibes match my goals.

[gideonisms]

I love when you get a new piece of clothing that is exactly like an old favorite piece of clothing, except it does not have 8 holes. This is how I wish to shop and go about my life

[im-da-bronx]

I’m so genuinely frustrated

I have a pair of jeans that I’m trying to fix, but they just keep ripping.

I finally figured out how to repair them while maintaining the stretch in the fabric, and as I was putting my embroidery hoop on to start fixing them, I ripped ANOTHER HOLE.

And this is after I patched the other leg, and immediately ripped a new hole underneath the new patch

What do I do? Do I continue to patch these pants? Or is it time to give up and buy a new pair?

Here’s a pic of the first patch I did, and the rip that formed underneath

[realtightsweater]

The first pic doesn't do the amount of damage justice but I'm so proud of this

[drewminyart]

okay okay so i was remembering that bit in tsc where Jean goes to sit in the living room because `it was cluttered and chaotic, but it felt lived-in. He could sense the others' presence even if they weren’t around to bother him, and that was enough to take the edge off the loneliness eating at his heart.’ and i thought about the quilts Cat‘s grandma made to go in that room and i thought !!! what if she (or Cat) made one for Jean

making one of those is such a labour of love and such a gesture of devotion— a gesture that Jean has never been offered before (maybe with the exception of Kevin's magnets and postcards). he's never allowed that sense of family and security until he moves in with Cat Laila and Jeremy. it just makes sense that he would covet these tangible reminders of the fact that he is no longer alone and he is loved and valued beyond his performance on the court

[lovesickgoose]

Perhaps you could draw Jean? Or Harry? Or both? I don't care what they're doing I just love your art and I need more to stare at 👁️👁️

Harry hijinks

[grim-has-issues]

I’m not particularly interested in starting a youtube channel, but I would live to make a tier list of Escaped’s characters based in how much of a loser I think they are.

[thejabber-talkey]

OoOOoogGhGh oh I am livid right now. The state and quality of brand new clothing is so abysmal. Terrible quality is ever-present, even in high-end brands, and is infuriatingly even more prevalent in women's clothes. I mean, look at this!

Do you see where the fabric on my jeans is thinning out. This is from barely a semester's worth of the top of my thighs rubbing against my desk.

And this

These are loose jeans! Not tight in the slightest. These jeans are as unskinny as I can get them, they're literally extra wide leg jeans. Why the hell are the seams splitting. There is no good reason for this to happen. There is, at any given point in time, zero stress on the side of my jeans.

I am going to fucking scream. I got these jeans maybe 7 months ago. I had to buy them from a department store (H&M, which I now know to avoid I guess) because I was in a pinch and away from home. This is abysmal oh my fucking god.

And I'm going to keep them, of course, because I know how to repair and strengthen my clothing. But damn. My only other jeans are also becoming Theseus's patchwork jeans. Is it so much to ask for a pair of jeans to last more than half a year before needing repair?

[not-poignant]

for the game, I assume that... you definitely know how to sew on a button and patch / repair minor clothing damage

False!

I'm actually really bad at this. I tried learning last year, but I'm physically very uncoordinated (I have very bad dyspraxia). I've never sewn a button onto anything. I've attempted minor clothing damage, but I didn't do a good job, and it didn't work.

I still want to learn though. But securing the knots and doing even stitches is hard for me. One of the reasons I like cross-stitch so much is it's the same action over and over again and the cloth gives you the size of each stitch. But it took me about 15 years to learn a basic pin stitch, lol.

~

From the true/false meme!

[a-strawberry-mouse]

Much, much better.

I genuinely feel more peaceful, which is a feeling I'm in short supply of. I imagine many feel that way. Restless and emotionally itchy.

But sometimes I just need a thing to go right.

[mildmayfoxe]

the annoying thing about having a sewing machine but it’s buried in the basement is i have a sewing machine but it’s buried in the basement. you can’t use something that’s buried in the basement

[yleniasupercursi]

I had to mend my jeans after a ridiculous fall - now they're my favourite!

[jensownzoo]

First attempt at visible mending went well:

Got a used pair of 100% cotton jeans that fit in the waist, just needed serious hemming and a tear at the knee repaired.

Used a hank of multiple colors of embroidery floss (from a trashed cross-stitch kit) and a huge straight upholstery needle to affix an interior patch of old jean material with a nice sunset colored pattern. In retrospect should have trimmed the white frayed threads away first, but it turned out nice for a first attempt.

Also hemmed up 5 inches of the cuffs using green embroidery floss from the same hank. Am eventually planning on adding embroidered leaves and possibly flowers or bugs, but the jeans are in usable condition and I'm wearing them right now (and I need to start on the repair of all my other jeans so I have pants to wear, so not a priority).

[realtightsweater]

mending!