Mending

I've been up to my eyeballs in mending this week. The weather has turned warm and my eight year old doesn't have a single pair of pants without a ripped knee or hole in them. None of this is rocket science or new ideas on my part, just wanted to show you what I did.

Here are my fixes:

First up are the distressed jeans that I wanted to make last longer than five minutes. The first day she wore them the knee tear got bigger (no surprise!) and I caught her sticking her finger in the thigh holes. I knew that they weren't going to last at that rate...

So, I took matching pieces of scrap denim from my overflowing pile of jeans and put small squares behind each of the rips and tears. I carefully zigzagged close to the fray to lock the scrap in place.

The beautiful thing about denim is that when it frays, it covers up your stitches. You can click on the pictures to see more details.

The second fix involved cut off jeans. I fixed all the tears on this pair like I did with the above pair. Then I folded up the hem about and inch and sewed it in place to make a cuff.

The picture above shows what the hem looked like before and after washing. I probably could've sewed it with a straight stitch so the fray would cover it up better, but I think maybe one more washing will do the trick.

The last fix involved finishing off the hem. I didn't want every pair of her shorts to be frayed at the end so I cut a strip of fabric 2 inches wide and made a sort of bias tape for the hem.

This picture is the pair of khaki shorts I did for the 3 year old. The 8 year old 's shorts are denim. I coudn't get any pictures because she put them on last night after she got out of the bath, wore them to bed, and wore them to school this morning. I guess that means she likes them, huh?

Renae's directions for hemming jeans into shorts.