Sew a patch - PEP BB textile.sand.patch

My beloved dog has a bad habit of chewing soft things that we leave in his range, so I get lots of opportunities for mending. This is my favorite cotton flannel robe (with my hand for scale—it’s a big hole!). I used sashiko cotton thread and a scrap of cotton flannel from my stash. I rather like visible mending, so the chewed edges were left irregular; they are whip stitched to the patch with contrasting thread. Added a few stars just to make it prettier. This is on the front and so not in an area of stress.

I sewed a patch onto a blown-out pair of pants, completing the project today.

Here's a photo of the pants with a significant hole in them:



I started the process by sewing-shut the tear.



Here's a photo of the patch I used. It's from an older pair of pants. I sewed round the edge to help prevent too much fraying as time goes on.



Here are the pants with the patch added:



Here's the finished sewing project, with me wearing the pants.



Thanks, volunteer reviewers! :)

This is the inside of my son's coat. He got too close to the fireplace. Luckily, it just melted, not ignited!

I got into a duel with Zorro and lost. I was left with this tear in my shirt sleeve.  The patch scrunched up a bit on the inside due to the ladder stitch, but is holding up well and pretty discrete from the outside.

David N Black wrote:I got into a duel with Zorro and lost. I was left with this tear in my shirt sleeve.  The patch scrunched up a bit on the inside due to the ladder stitch, but is holding up well and pretty discrete from the outside.

Hi David! Speaking from experience, every patch I've done like that has ripped along the stiches. With so few--and large--stitches, the fabric will have just a few point to pull on it. I've never mended with a ladder stitch (maybe someone else has and can correct me), but I think this needs small stitches outlining the mend. Otherwise, I fear the mend will come undone in the wash or when under strain, and you'll have a much larger hole to mend (I've had that happen to me more times than I would like!)

My puppy got caught chewing on my favorite quilt. She chewed holes and rips.  This tear I repaired by simply sewing a patch of fabric of similar size to the rest of the quilt, directly over top of the torn one below. I cut the new fabric about a quarter of an inch larger than the area I wanted to cover then turned it under to make a clean edge.

Then I quilted through all layers of fabric, in a similar pattern to what was there, for added durability and continuity.  

I have a couple pairs of jeans where the knee ripped out this summer. I was figuring out how I wanted to patch them and came across this article on boro mending and decided to do that. I was gathering stuff up when I remembered there might be a BB for this and read up to make sure I gathered the right photos. So here they are, below. I'm wearing this pair of pants right now and will start a much worse knee this evening.

One of my favorite cotton skirts had a hole, and I had a green T-shirt that was close enough in color. It didn't turn out too obvious thankfully, I wear the skirt often.

I've got a lot of worn, torn clothes.  I also have a hard time throwing these out because I just think of how much labor would be involved if I were to actually make all that fabric, not to mention sewing the clothes.  Yet, sadly I haven't done well tackling the job of patching and refurbishing all this worn, torn clothing.  Time to start changing that!  I'll start with the shirt on my back that has a torn elbow and attempt to patch that.  

I dug through the closet and selected the most worn and torn shirt I haven't quite thrown away, making that the source for fabric patches (and it turns out for buttons for the next BB I'll submit).

The results of my first effort here aren't pretty, but it feels strong.  Since this is a shirt I mostly wear in the colder months under a sweater the ugly patched elbow won't matter when I'm out in polite society.  No one will see it!

Side note:  It took a bit of a hunt for me to find the 100% cotton thread.  I had to wait until I was making a trip into the city to go to the big fabric store.  All that is available immediately around me is polyester thread!  I stocked up on it once I found it.