) will wonder why I don’t just throw them in the garbage or scrap pile. They’re still good! I promise! Anyway, I thought I better hurry and repair the huge holes so I have some modesty this week. Overall, this took 30 minutes, start to finish, with interruptions from kids. So super easy. Some of these pictures are from when I repaired my hubby’s work shorts too, so keep that in mind if all the sudden, things look different!
First, find some fabric and thread that match the offending pants/shorts. Since mine were cut offs, I still have the bottom of the legs in my denim scraps.
Here’s the huge hole/run, and the smaller hole that just shows my pocket liner, but thought I should fix it anyway. Cut enough fabric to cover your hole, with room to spare.
Pin it underneath the hole, with the fabric inside of your pants. Make sure you pin on a flat surface. It may take some maneuvering to get it nice and flat. You’ll want to make sure you do, otherwise you’ll have a ridge or bubble, or your hole will look weird.
See how huge that run is? It’s about 6 inches long, and 3 inches wide. Don’t even know how that happened
Next, you’ll want to set your machine to a long, narrow zig zag stitch. If you need a refresher on your machine/terms, go here.
Mine is set to the widest my zig zag will go (5.5), and it’s set at a 1.5, but I upped it to 2 later for the length. Then, you just start stitching the zig zag all around your patch with the thread that matches. I go all the way around the hole, and then I start going back and forth over things to make sure they’re secure. Basically, you’re going to zig zag the crap out of it! VERY IMPORTANT: Don’t sew your leg together. That’d be embarrassing. Make sure it’s only through the 1 layer of fabric!
Sometimes you’ll have those fun white threads everywhere. Just keep on eye out so you don’t sew them over your presser foot, and then before you know it, you can’t move, and you have to cut your way out….Not that it’s ever happened to me.
Here’s what it looked like after I went over everything. Honestly, I could zig zag even more over everything, but these shorts are on their last leg. Get it? Leg? Ha ha! Moving on….
This is what it looked like on the inside. Notice I’m using a white bobbin? There’s a very good reason for that. Ready? It’s really scientific. I’M LAZY. There. Now, I could rationalize and say that the pants are sewn with a white thread, and yada yada yada, but really, I’m lazy. It’s on the inside. However, if you see these khaki pants I did for my hubby, they have a brown bobbin, and it shows…
Okay? So it’s okay to be lazy if it works with your pants, but make sure it doesn’t look bad! Also, make sure you don’t sew an entire patch on, only to realize you’ve run out of bobbin and nothing stayed sewed. Sonuva. K, back to the inside of the pants. Obviously you don’t want a bunch of loose fabric hanging out inside rubbing on you weird, or catching your toes or whatever, so you cut it away. Carefully.
Make sure when you cut you can see your shorts AND YOU DON’T CUT THEM. That would be so awesome to cut a new hole in your shorts, right? Cut off as much of the extra fabric as you can without cutting your pants, k?
Here’s a hole patched with one side trimmed…
And the other side trimmed. Looks nice, right? So now you can go crazy and patch this hole:
(oh by the way, if you’re sewing close to a pocket, instead of accidently sewing the pocket to your pants, embarrassing, pin up the pocket out of the way when you pin your patch on…Like so):
and this one just below the pocket:
And the other pocket:
And the other leg:
Seriously. I need some new cut offs. I have some waiting for it, but I’m refusing to give them up as pants yet…What a stubborn girl! But, it’s easy to patch things, as long as you don’t sew things together you don’t want to! Enjoy! I’m off on a 3 hour drive with kids, but I get to see Nat tonight! Woohoo!
Love the use of the zig zag stitch for this rather than just sticking a big old patch on top!!
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