My goodness, a case of sickness came over our house the last 2 weeks, hence the lack of blogging! But we’re on the upswing now. Today I am sharing how I mended a hole in my neighbor’s pants. I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, but it took me a couple of weeks to get around to it. For some reason, I just couldn’t wrap my head around the process. Would I have to rip out a side seam? I finally got up the nerve to just sit down with my sewing machine and figure it out. So here’s what I did.

1. Cut away all the frayed threads.

 2. My neighbor brought a patch with him. So, you’ll have to find a patch from another pair of jeans, or at the fabric store (it can be denim or anything colorful and funky)!

 3. Place the patch under the hole. Match the diagonal pattern of the denim with the jeans and the patch. Pin the patch to the jeans. (Don’t pin the bottom layer of the jeans)!

 4. Put the leg of the jeans on your sewing machine. No, I did not have to rip out a side seam! Hooray!

 5. Set your machine to a zig zag stitch. Treat the patch like a rectangle shape. When it comes time to pivot, leave the needle down.

 6. It was a little tricky pivoting all the way around the patch, but it can totally be done! I made good use of the backstitch button, and if I couldn’t sew all the way around, I backstitched to where I needed to get. Does that make sense?

 7. Now take the pants off your machine, and turn inside out.

 8. Trim off the excess fabric from the patch.

 9. Ta-da! Almost as good as new. 🙂

Oh, and here’s my neighbor. We love him like family. We have the best neighbors all around us. We are truly blessed!