For a change, I didn’t have anything I had to do yesterday evening. What I did have was two pairs of well-worn Gap Easy Fit blue jeans. Both had holes in the knees. The one with only one hole in a knee, and no paint splatters, had a big hole in a pocket, suitable for losing keys, a Swiss army knife, and of course coins. I guess I’m fairly hard on pockets, keeping keys in them without a key case. Certainly I always wear a hole in the left pocket, where the keys stay, long before the right pocket shows any signs of wear. I hoped that from two pairs of jeans, one unwearable because of the hole in the pocket, the other pretty bad because of holes in both knees, I could make one usable pair.
\nThere’s a bolt of muslin in our fabric stash that would look at home in a fabric store. It’s not just a few yards. I cut the worn pocket out of the jeans with the better knees, put it on the muslin, and cut out a new pocket using the worn one for a pattern. It’s not easy putting a pocket in old jeans; the rivets, at least, get in the way. I’m not sure if I sewed the edges up all the way or if there’s a gap in the new one that things could fall out of. At least if there’s a gap it’s not at the bottom, so gravity will be working to keep things in.<\/p>\n
Second I replaced the hip pocket. It’s just a patch pocket. All I needed to do for it was to take the old one (with holes that threatened to let my wallet through) off, cut a replacement from the leg of the other pair of jeans, press the edges over,\u00c2\u00a0 hem the top edge, and stitch the sides and bottom in place.<\/p>\n
Last was the patch on the knee. It was trickier to get the stitching in the right place, even with the free arm sewing machine. I’m down on iron-on patches; they always eventually peel off, and end up looking worse than the original hole. The patch I put on is not the least bit hidden, but it’s going to stay about this bad until it wears through too. But the other knee will need work before that happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For a change, I didn’t have anything I had to do yesterday evening. What I did have was two pairs of well-worn Gap Easy Fit blue jeans. Both had holes in the knees. The one with only one hole in a knee, and no paint splatters, had a big hole in a pocket, suitable for … <\/p>\n