How NOT to Patch Jeans For Your Kids

My oldest son, Mr. R, has several pairs of pants. I don’t know how he managed to do it but every single pair got a hole in them in the same week. Since it was the middle of winter and it didn’t make any sense to turn them into shorts, I decided to patch them all up.

Some of these holes were crazy! This is what I get for not keeping on top of fixing patches early on.

I had a lot of fun coming up with creative patches for these pants. They’re all different and each one has a little personality. But you know what happened? Almost every single one of these pants got a new hole in them shortly after he started wearing them again! My beautiful creations were ruined just like that. I don’t want the same thing to happen to you, so I am sharing with you my lessons learned of what not to do when patching jeans.

Not using a fusible/iron-on patch

You’ve got two options for patching your jeans: either use an existing iron-on patch that has a sticky side to attach to your jeans, or use scrap material to cover it up. Iron-on patches are strong enough on their own to hold up to pressure. However if you grabbed some extra jean or some other material for your patch job, and you do not add fusible (and maybe even a double layer of fabric) the hole will reappear within a month. That hole appeared from too much strain on the jeans, just a single layer of fabric will just delay the problem. FYI if you don’t know, fusible is a material used to fuse two fabrics together, giving them added strength. Heat’n Bond is a fantastic option for this.

Not leaving enough extra fabric around the edges

It is extremely important to leave at least 1/2″ extra fabric around the hole when cutting your patch. There’s nothing worse than a hole reappearing because the patch barely covered the hole in the first place!

Not reinforcing with a stitch

You might be able to get away with not reinforcing the patch job with stitching around the edges, depending on how strong the fusible is. However, why risk it? If the stitch is going to give it extra stay-power, I say go for it! If you pick a thread that very closely matches the jean material, you can barely tell it’s there.

Not confirm the patch choice with your child

You see this patch below? It’s a nice one, is it not? Sure it’s not glamorous, but it matches, does the job, and gives an extra dimension to the pants.

These pants used to be my son’s favorite pair, and now he refuses to wear them because he doesn’t like the way they look. So a word to the wise – make sure your child likes what you’re about to do to his pants before you do it, otherwise you’ll be wasting 15 minutes and ensuring that the pants you’re fixing will never be worn again. Sorry kiddo… guess I can’t win every time!

Not admitting that jeans only last so long

Clothing wears out over time. Especially on active children who are running, jumping, and crawling all over the place. So I’m sorry to say, that even with the above insurances on the patch, your jeans aren’t going to last forever. Eventually the patch job will wear out and you will need to turn the jeans into shorts. But hopefully the pants will last long enough to get you to summer by following these tips!

Now that you have learned from my mistakes, do you know anyone with a time-machine that I can use to go back and fix my son’s pants correctly? Some day I’ll learn.