Get your mending on

My brother-in-law told me recently that even though I have girls, they play like boys.  It's true.  My daughters are the rough-housing, chase the dog around the house, wrestle things to the ground and crawl around like whatever animal they are playing today, kind of girls.  Quite often this involves shimmying around on their hands and knees...and wearing out the knees in their pants.  I am not completely opposed to my kids wearing holey jeans...I'm frugal...but it isn't my favorite either to have them running around like a bunch of ragamuffins.  So....patch time.  But not just any patches...oh no...we're giving their jeans an all new style.

That would be the pile of pants needing mending in my house...

So, you start with a rip.  Turn the article of clothing inside out.

Cut out a piece of fabric that extends past the rip a good inch on all sides.  Pin it in place.  It is probably a good choice to use a piece of fabric that has been pre-washed.  I know this is difficult as I rarely pre-wash my fabric before using it and so therefore rarely have scraps that have been pre-washed.  This is a piece of old sheeting that I am using to make my Valentine's quilt.  So, I actually did use pre-washed in this case.  I wouldn't say it was a complete necessity, but fabric does shrink a bit...so be forewarned.

Turn pants right-side-out now.  First step is to make a blanket stitch around the rip. I used 4 strands of regular embroidery thread. You can either use a contrasting color of thread or try and match it to the pants.  You can also choose to trim away the raggedy ends or as I did here, tack them down with some simple running stitches.

Using a running stitch, circle around and around the patch to help reinforce the weakened fabric..plus it looks cute.  When you are finished with your stitches, turn the garment inside out again and trim away the excess fabric.  I would say leave approximately 1/4" of fabric around your stitching.

Here's a sort of up close so you could see the stitches in the middle.  Obviously pale yellow thread doesn't really show up that great.  Oh well.

Here is an example of a patch that I decided I didn't like.  So I unpicked the red running stitches.  If you're not loving something...change it.

I mended leggings.  Gave these ones some cute little embroidered flowers using the daisy stitch.

Remember the one above that I didn't like...this is what I changed it too.  I used a lighter shade of embroidery floss for the running stitches than the blanket stitch around the rip and gave this one some flowers as well.  So cute!

Here's an example of matching my thread to the color of pants.  So, you don't see my stitches much, but the pattern on the patch fabric comes through.  Both my girls are thrilled with their "new" pants...and I'm thrilled that I am not buying new pants half-way through the school year.

Thanks for reading!!

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