How I Patch & Hem Jeans

My children inherited my husband's long torso and short-ish legs. Don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly the tall, slender type myself, but proportionately my legs are pretty long for my size. So I can wear regular pants without usually having to undergo a lot of hemming. But even for me, jeans can be the exception to that. So, with short legs running in our family (and nice round bums) we have to size up in the jeans department (for the kids) and hem (a LOT).

I was so happy to find this fabulous way of hemming jeans from Just Something I Made. Fast and easy and it keeps the original hem look that we all love about jeans. It's has it's drawbacks, but overall, it's pretty great. I'll show you on my son's jeans.

This picture was taken after I ripped out the seam, but you can get a good idea from the wear lines, how it worked. I didn't cut the leftover fabric off, I just hand-tacked it up on the inside so it would stay there.

 

This is how it looks after ripping them hem out. You can see that I took about 3 inches out in hemming them. They'll be a little long on him and might look a tad goofy with the wear lines (and darker portion there), but I hope they'll be acceptable enough for my husband to put them on him (he dresses the kids most days).

These jeans needed letting down for a little while, but they also began to sport a small wear tear in the knee (the joy of boys!), so I took care of the whole job in one go. I patched up the hole in the jeans like this. I first saw this here on CRAFT (complete tutorial in that link).

 

Inside pic. If you can't tell what I did here, I cut a small piece of denim (from old jeans; I keep them around for crafting and whatnot... it also occurred to me that I should keep the bottom portion of my daughter's hemmed jeans since there's usually about 4 or 5 inches to lop off those and then I could use them for patches). So I cut a little square, quite a bit bigger than the hole. Usually there's wear around the hole, so it's good to give the whole area some reinforcement. I pin the denim in place and, using my sewing machine, I just sew back (using the reverse button) and forth pulling slightly to kind of zigzag it along the patch. Cover the patch that way, trim the excess patch, if you like... and you're done!

 

Turn them right side out and they look like that. It's a little funky looking, but I think goofy patches are more obvious; this is more like the distressed look. And that patch isn't going ANYWHERE!