Make sure your jeans or leggings have been washed and ironed. If you have fabric in your stash that you would like to use this will also need to be washed and ironed, otherwise you run the risk of the fabrics shrinking at different rates the first time you wash them together which may spoil the look of your newly decorated piece.
Consider the items you want to mend with a patch upgrade and decide whether you want to add an external or internal patch. Both are equally effective but will give a different look. Then decide if you want to work with the original rip as it is or if you want to use it as the starting point to cut a new shape to patch.
External patches
Firstly, trim the frayed edges from around the hole. Be careful doing this, you don’t want to cut a hole on the other side of the leg! Choose a fabric for the patch and cut a large enough piece to comfortably cover the hole. Pin the patch in place using safety pins or sewing pins, making sure you don’t pin through all three layers. If it helps you could put a piece of card inside the arm or leg that you are patching to stop this happening.
Consider how you want to completed patch to look: do you want to round off the corners or trim the patch down a bit? Where do you want the stitching to be – around the outside of the hole or across it? Which stitches do you want to use? Running stitch is the easiest stitch to use, but there are myriad other stitches you could use.
If you are a confident sewist, you can thread your needle with embroidery floss and start to stitch the patch in place. For the less confident, feel free to tack the patch in place and remove the pins before you start stitching it in place.
Thread your needle with embroidery floss and tie a knot in the end. I find it easiest to stitch around the outside of the hole first to secure the patch in place, before starting to add further lines of stitching. You could add concentric rings or squares around that first line of stitches; straight lines running out from the centre like rays from the sun; horizontal and/or vertical lines right across the patch and hole…. Whatever your imagination can conjure you can stitch over your mend.
Internal patches
Feel free to trim away the furry edges of the tear or leave them if you prefer (but bear in mind that they may get muddled in your stitches). Choose the fabric for the patch and cut it to fit over the hole. Turn your garment inside out and pin the fabric over the hole, making sure that the right side of the fabric shows through the hole. Pin in place, and tack if required, making sure you only pin or stitch through two layers of the fabric and not right through all three layers – you don’t want to stitch the arm or leg of your clothing closed!!
Turn the garment right side out and think about how you could stitch over and around the hole and patch. Running stitch is highly effective, but you might want to add a row of blanket stitch around the raw edge of the hole for added security or use vertical and horizontal lines of stitching to create a series of crosses. Once again, the only limit is your imagination!
Other sorts of patches
If this all seems a bit too much for your skillset, you could use sew-on or iron-on patches for smaller mends. These are widely available commercially, or you could make your own by sewing pretty fabric offcuts on to a felt or denim backing. When using iron-on patches, do make sure you don’t stick the two sides of the garment together through the hole….
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