Patching & Re-purposing jeans

Our budget is so tight its about to snap like the elastic on your high school underwear.  I noticed last week that my kids have holes in their jeans and there is NO WAY we can afford to buy them new jeans.  PLUS, I think at this time of year, in Texas, its kinda stupid to buy jeans.  I mean its like 73 degrees today and its only going to get warmer until maybe September so why buy jeans that the kids will grow out of and hardly wear within the next 6 months?  That's when I thought, "there must be some cute or cool way to patch up the knees on their jeans and not have them embarrassed about it."

Have you ever had the experience where you hear about something for the first time and then you just keep hearing it over and over again during the next week?  Odd, huh?  Well, that's what happened to me last week with PINTEREST.  I saw an ad for it online last Monday or something, then a friend mentioned it at the beginning of my baby shower Friday (I'm due this month), then one of the gifts I got was a flower arrangement made from baby socks that were rolled to look like rose buds--SO CUTE!  So we all asked where this other friend got the idea for that cute arrangement and what do you think she says?  PINTEREST!  So I hop online to see what its all about and I find the solution to my "patch up holey jeans" problem. Well--I got a jump start from there anyway, then kept googling online to find something that matched my kids' personalities, my skills, and our family budget.  By the way, can you say you HAVE a budget without money to actually BUDGET??? Just wondering.

I have a daughter and son that both had holey jeans.  (My other son, I just found out, only HAS 1 pair of jeans that are long enough for him...still trying to find a free solution to that problem.)  So I set to work on patching and re-purposing.  I found the right course of action on a fellow blogger's site http://resweater.blogspot.com/2012/02/its-feature-friday-refashion-co-op.html  Turns out, this seemed to take more time than I had thought--I'll explain in a minute.

So I tell the kids I'm going to patch their pants and have them pick a cookie cutter shape that I can use as a template to cut out the patch.  The patch itself is not the shape. I just cut the hole in their jeans out in that shape and  put a rectangular piece of darker denim behind it.  The darker denim came from a pair of kid's jeans that still looked like they were in good shape except the two bleach spots on the back that ate a hole through the pocket.  So I figured those probably wouldn't get worn with a hole in the butt and I used the unblemished legs for my patches (RE-PURPOSE).  The next step is to secure the patch inside the jeans (which I did with pins) and sew around the shape to keep it in place, seal the hole, and prohibit further tearing.  The problem comes in when I realize that these little kid jean legs won't go over the arm of my sewing machine.  Thus I spend the next hour or so hand sewing the patch on and adding little touches with embroidery thread to make the shape look like what its supposed to be (adding laces to the football and antlers to the butterfly, etc).  Next time I will probably try seam ripping one side of the leg and sewing it by machine.  I'm sure even with the seam ripping, it wouldn't take as long as sewing it by hand.  So it DID take some time but I got the job done, the kids seemed excited about it and I saved at least $20 in buying them each a new pair of jeans.

Yesterday i took another pair of jeans from each child that needed more patching and did the same thing with different shapes.  This time it went a little bit faster.  For my son, I didn't have a cookie cutter shape big enough to fit around the hole that was already there.  So I had to get a little creative.  He's really into skulls and crossbones (probably from Pirates of the Caribbean movie) so I got online and found a skull shape that would work.  Problem was, I don't have any computer paper or ink in the printer to print it out.  So I used my noggin and found a piece of scrap paper lying around, put it up to the computer monitor and traced the image myself.  I cut that out and used it as my template for the jeans and it came out great.  This time though, I reinforced the patch behind the shape with some of that stitch witchery iron-on tape for hemming pants (you can get it at Wal-Mart for about .97 cents) just to keep it in place while I sewed it on by hand.  It worked REALLY WELL!  Then I cut out the eyes and nose for the skull and used the same iron-on tape to secure it to the patch in just the right place.  My son really liked that patch job and wore it to school today (which is why I didn't take a photo of it yet).

For my daughter I did a layer upon layer heart.   She seemed excited about it too.  The funny thing is, with her, she's purposely not worn either pair of patched up jeans to school yet.  I mean, I watched her face from the corner of my eye as she checked out her jeans and she genuinely seemed impressed with each patch job.  But her 5yr old self hasn't worn a pair yet.  IDK why.  Is she secretly embarrassed?  Does she not want to look different?  Maybe I'll run them all thru the wash and let the cool fringe look come thru and frame the shape before giving them back and see what she thinks of them then.  None the less, its another $20 saved.  Now, if only I could actually get paid for saving money...GEEZ!

BTW, the stitching I did by hand was a lot faster because of a technique I saw on HGTV's She's Crafty show.  It also got me thinking that the sewn by hand look isn't just homey looking but also cool!  The episode featured tees from Teresa Findlay http://www.hgtv.ca/articles/articledetails.aspx?ContentId=2955&cat=2&by=5.

Anyway, instead of doing the "up and down" motion with the needle thru the fabric w/ the little amount of space on the inside of the leg to pull the thread all the way down, I did a kinda "bunch and slide thru" which I just found out is actually called a RUNNING STITCH.  So instead of pulling the needle and thread all the way thru the fabric on each stitch, you just keep poking it back thru as you bunch the fabric and finally pull it all the way thru on the 3rd or so stitch.  I might have to post a video of this if it doesn't make sense.  If you don't get it, let me know.