PQ 15.3 Inside Out: Showing What Should Be Hidden

 

This week's project doesn't count because I technically started it ahead of time.  It is a pair of jeans whose distress was moving far enough north to start causing me distress.  So I ripped out the side seam.  Did some structural repairs and then left them on my mending pile.  For a bit.

I used the darning stitch on my machine to put reinforced stitches at the apex of the worst tears.  Basically any spot the looked like it was going to continue tearing got a hefty patch of stitches.

 Then I pinned some fancy cotton scraps behind the distressed bits.  I probably should have used scrap denim but getting it to lay flat and and be stable took forever and I didn't want to do it all over again.  So it is what it is.

Then I used a zigzag stitch to secure the fabric to the back of the jeans.  Well, actually I had to wait a week while my machine went off to visit Mike at the machine spa.  I think it got cranky about stitching in weird directions on heavy denim.  But Mike was able to save her.  (Although he did happen to say that a 15 year old machine with TWENTY FOUR MILLION embroidery stitches that he couldn't get parts for was probably getting a bit past her prime.  When I mentioned I had a second one I was hoping he could keep alive for me he said it was good I had one for parts.  I wanted to cry.)

Then I forgot to take a bunch of pictures but I basically used all the pretty scraps I have been saving and patched it.  Randomly.  Poorly.  No rhyme or reason.  Well, we can get fancy and call it raw edge applique but that is probably giving it more credit than I deserve.  

No matter.  I stitched the side seam back up.  Inartfully draped it on the door and took a picture.  Voila!  Patched pants.  

And it qualifies for theme because if you knew my mother, you would certainly know that this is the part of patching a pair jeans that should be kept hidden from view with tiny small stitches.