Fixing Ripped Jeans

How old is your oldest pair of jeans? 

One of the very few advantages of being absolutely teeny tiny is that you don't grow out of clothes from your teens. I've had this pair of blue jeans since age 14 and they're turning white now. As a sort of project for myself I refuse to throw them away, and will instead keep fixing them. Eventually there will be more patches than original material.

So here we have the casualty of me running up the stairs too vigorously: a big old hole in the bum.

You can see the faint outline of an older repair to the left. I REFUSE TO GIVE UP ON THE JEANS.

First of all we'll be wanting some fabric to reinforce the tear. You can use anything that's a similar colour but since I once sewed up the leg ends (because short legs) I decided to use that instead.

1. Cut stitches from the rolled up bottoms.

2. Unroll ends of jeans and notice how their original colour has faded in so many washes.

3. Cut off excess fabric and stitch ends of jeans back up.

4. Check excess fabric covers the hole.

5. Cut fabric to size, iron, and pin to the inside of the jeans. (I don't own an iron so I used hair straighteners, hence it not being very well done.)

6. Turn jeans right side out and stitch around the hole using matching thread. Be careful around seams as they're harder to push a needle through, and don't sew any pockets shut! You'll need to stitch the reinforcing fabric to the jeans in multiple places so it doesn't rip again.

7. Either cut the pulled threads on the outside or sew them down so they're less obvious. If you have access to a sewing machine you could zigzag multiple times over the area for extra reinforcement.

8. Turn the jeans inside out, remove pins, and sew reinforcing fabric down around the edges or trim it. (Sorry, don't have a picture for this.)

Finished! Here's a different pair of jeans that I tried to kick in and ripped in almost exactly the same place.

Before:

Rip in bum of jeans. At least this time I didn't have to manoeuvre a needle around the pocket.

After:

Right side. The repair is invisible when the jeans are worn.

Wrong side, showing the reinforcing fabric.

I know I'm not the only person who's too frugal/sentimental to throw clothes away. I should really stop trying to do kung fu in tight jeans.

L