Practically Crafty: How to Mend a Hole in Your Pocket

Torn PocketIn celebration of my first week of summer vacation (and to make up for totally blowing off my Crafting a Green World blog responsibilities while I graded 42 final papers and calcuated 42 final grades), I am posting a serious, savvy, stash-busting craft project every day this week. I’ve put off the mending, the upkeep, the interior design, and the works-in-progress for too long, and it’s time to bust some stash and clear out some projects.

First up: my favorite pair of jeans. My dancing jeans. The jeans I hemmed with bias tape. The jeans that I wear most often when I carry my sketchbook around in my back pocket.

The jeans with the two huge, gaping holes in the back pocket.

Hurry and go dig out your favorite pair of jeans with the hole in the back pocket, because we are about to mend it.

You will need:

  • your favorite jeans with a hole in the back pocket (not a rip with a gaping flap–I have one of those, too, but we’ll fix that one later this week)
  • a seam ripper
  • a piece of matching fabric from your stash, at least a quarter-inch wider on all sides than your pocket (choose anything thin, such as flannel or quilting cotton, and choose something that will blend in with your jeans–I’m using the blue plaid flannel ring sling that I made over four years ago and used with both my daughters)
  • iron
  • matching thread
  • sewing machine with VERY sturdy needle inserted (at least a denim needle, and perhaps even a leather needle, which is what I use)

Take Off Your Pocket1. Using the seam ripper, take off your ripped pocket. This will take some work, because the thread used for jeans is VERY sturdy, but it is quite do-able. Don’t worry about marking where your pocket sits before you take it off–it will be completely obvious.

2. Lay out your piece of matching fabric, and iron it flat.

3. Lay your pocket on top of your matching fabric, and cut around it by about one-quarter of an inch on all sides. Clip your corners on that matching fabric, because you’ll be folding your hem in.

Line up your matching fabric to your pocket4. Flip over your pocket and fabric so that the fabric is on top, and working on one side at a time, fold one side of matching fabric under so that it’s even with the pocket, and iron.

5. Pin the matching fabric to the pocket.

6. Topstitch the top edge of your pocket, sewing the matching fabric to the pocket.

7. Pin your pocket, with the matching fabric still attached, back to your jeans, exactly where it was before.

Admire my boo-tay!8. Stitch over the old stitch lines to re-sew the pocket back to the jeans. You’ll be sewing through your original pocket, your new fabric liner, and the butt of your jeans here. You’ll also be stitching two sets of stitch lines, because jeans are sewn with twin needles. Manufacturers do make twin needles for home sewing machines, but it will look neater if you follow the original stitch lines exactly, and you’ll be better able to do that if you use a single needle and do each stitch line separately. Also, if you’d really like your sewing to blend in, choose a thread color that matches your jeans, not the original thread color that you ripped out. It was probably yellow, and you do have yellow thread, but it won’t match, because it will be a different weight. It will look perfectly natural if you match your thread color to your fabric, though.

Now, all you have left to do is find someone with a camera and get them to admire your boo-tay!

6 thoughts on “Practically Crafty: How to Mend a Hole in Your Pocket”

  1. You can also find denim thread at the fabric stores– it’s thicker like the stuff that comes in jeans, and that weird darkish gold color. (Comes in a couple other colors too now, at least it did the last time I was at JoAnn’s.) So that could make the match even closer. Comes in handy for upcycling old jeans into new skirts and bags and such too, since you still keep the denim styling!

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  3. Thank you for posting this! I have 5 pairs (yes, FIVE!) of my husband’s work jeans with holes in the back pockets from the tools he stashes there… I tried using iron-on fabric to repair the holes & I’m sure you already know how well that worked ;>)

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