For some, ripped jeans are right in style and they actually purchase them new with rips and tears!! Well, I have a hard time keeping mine in working order. I have to tend to those torn jeans before long or I don’t have a pair of jeans to speak of anymore! Now, if you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen my post stating that dealing with the mending pile is one of my least favorite house chores. But, that is what I tackled this week and now I’m going to share with you, in 5 easy steps, how I mend my jeans.

I had some wool felt in my sewing cabinet, leftover from when I made my Crazy Cat Quilt. I thought this would work well because it would be fairly soft against the skin and not likely to unravel over time.

I cut a piece of cloth about 1/4″ larger than the hole I was patching on all sides. Then I reached inside the jeans to place the patch where I wanted it. I like to work from the side that’s actually going to show.

Intending to do a zigzag stitch, I almost forgot to set the seam by starting with a forward and back straight stitch. The zigzag seam is nice because it buttons down all those loose ends that are trying to unravel.

I reverse stitched right back over the top of my first zigzag seam to be sure I caught all the threads. And I was too lazy to pull it out of the machine, and restart going forward when I could just hold the reverse button down. LOL!

This is something I had to learn the hard way. The first few times I patched my husbands jeans, I soon discovered the patch cloth was unraveling, folded over, and frankly very uncomfortable. To avoid this, I always stitch all the way around the edge of my patch to secure all sides and prevent any unraveling. Not that wool felt would unravel! But it depends what type of fabric you use. This tends to make the patch look a little messy, but it gets the job done. I don’t know about you, but I’m more worried about getting the job done than caring how it looks.

Aw, the wonderful feeling of knowing I resurrected something a lot of people would have thrown in the Goodwill or even the trash. I really don’t think the patch is very noticeable. It would have been a lot harder to see had I used blue thread…but once again, I was too lazy to change out the spool and bobbin for a different color! Simply because it doesn’t matter to me. These are my work jeans now and the plants in my garden really don’t care.