Sewing Sunday: Jeans Repair

Does a hand-stitched repair count as Sewing Sunday?  In the absence of a larger-scale project (though, did you see Amanda’s gorgeous bag yesterday?), I’m going to make the executive decision that it counts.

On Friday, Glenn messaged me while I was at work that he found a hole in the crotch of his favorite jeans and asked if I could fix them.  I’ve never tried to fix jeans before, but I thought it would be interesting to try.  Since the hole was long, narrow, and adjacent to a seam, I thought it was a good candidate.

I looked up how to repair jeans and came up with several different methods, some of them involving iron-on or sewn on patches, some involving a sewing machine, among others.  I opted to repair the hole by hand because I didn’t feel like maneuvering my sewing machine in the crotch of a pair of jeans, plus I’ve never machine-sewn denim before.  The crotch didn’t seem like the most comfortable place for a patch, so that was out, too.

I started by sewing around the outside of the hole with a blanket stitch.  I read that this could help prevent future fraying, much like finishing the raw edges of seams with a zig-zag stitch on a machine.  I had to look up how to do the stitch (I have had next to no hand-sewing education), but after looking at a few pictures, it became fairly self-explanatory.  It helped that it wasn’t supposed to be decorative, so it didn’t have to look pretty.  I held the thread double for extra strength.

 

 

I then began closing the hole using a blind stitch.  As advised in one of the articles I read, I started the stitching about half an inch below the hole and continue about half an inch past the end of the hole.

 

I actually really enjoy this stitch.  It reminds me of mattress stitch for seaming knitting.  With both, I love how pulling on your working thread/yarn zips up the sides.  It’s like magic.

 

I accidentally broke one of the threads when I was tying it off at the end, but hopefully that won’t be too much of an issue, since I did hold the thread double throughout.  I tried to catch the loose thread with the connected thread when I tied that off.

 

The whole process probably took less than an hour, but I didn’t time it.  I generally hate hand-sewing, but this was a surprisingly satisfying little project.  I don’t know how well it will hold, since the surrounding fabric has been worn pretty thin, but hopefully this will lend a bit more life to these jeans.