Salvaged Jeans

Somehow I manage wear holes in my jeans on a regular basis. I'm sure it has plenty to do with being on the carpet with my kids a good portion of the day! Sometimes the rest of the jeans are wearing out too, so the hole isn't that big of a deal, but a hole in a pair that still had plenty of wear remaining, and I am super bummed!

Patching a hole from the inside never looks right to me, and just patching the one little hole would have drawn attention to the fact that it was there even more so. When I was doing an internet search about patching jeans, I came across several different "patchwork" styles (for examples look at various designer brands, Hot Topic, ArtFire, and even eBay).

I decided the patchwork look would be easy enough for me to make, but I still wasn't sure that I could pull it off style-wise! After getting the advice of my fashion-loving sister (who happens to live in Miami), I decided that I really liked how my "new" jeans turned out!

After getting ideas from some different websites, I ended up using a pair of my daughter's jeans for inspiration also.

I really wish I had done a better job documenting the process along the way because it was so easy! I had a very small (less than 1 inch) hole in one knee, but the other knee was thin also, so I realized I needed to reinforce both sides of the pants. I have saved every worn out pair of jeans we've gone through, and was finally able to put them to good use!

I cut a bunch of square-ish pieces from different wash jeans, then pinned them onto my jeans to see how it would look. I even worn the jeans while I was pinning the pieces over the knees because the knees were fairly stretched out, so leaving them flat would have made the patches not end up sewn on evenly.

I used my sewing machine and stitched around each patch, and then helped tease out the material to create more of a frayed look. This ended up being kind of an extra step, since I sewed over top of these when I patched the jeans.

The most time-consuming part of this was sewing the patches to the jeans, but it was so worth it because I love the finished product!

My husband took a bunch of pictures for me one evening, and he had fun getting me to pose (something I feel extremely awkward doing!). I wanted to do a whole second-hand "salvaged" outfit for you...I think I got everything from Goodwill over the past 2 or 3 years. The jeans are Gap (paid $2.50), the sweater is j.Crew ($3.50), and the books are knock-off Uggs (less than $5).

What do you think? Do you like the patchwork look?

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