Patches

I HATE holey jeans, and I think that patches look silly. Like most people, I would prefer to be able to replace my children's pants when they start showing wear, but, even shopping at resale stores, that has become an impossibility for my budget. So, here I am, trying to figure out how to patch jeans, but make it look alright.

First, I went through my scraps of fabric, looking for boyish, and girlish ones that were heavy enough to stand up to some wear and tear. Then I got creative with the shapes I cut out - flowers for the girls, parallelograms, triangles, and diamonds for the boys.

The other thing I hate about patching is that my children's pants legs are too small to fit on my sewing machine - so it either turns out looking funny, or I could rip open a seam to spread it out and use the sewing machine - or I can hand sew it. Ugh!

This time around, though, I had a day when I was mostly confined to the couch anyway, due to pregnancy issues, so hand sewing at least gave me something to do. I got out my cross-stitch thread and picked some complimentary colors. Using three strands at a time, I stitched all around the shapes. Oh, I almost forgot.... I used spray adhesive to stick the patches to the jeans until I got them sewed on. It should come out in the first wash, and was a lot easier than trying to pin them on.

Here are some pictures of the finished product.