Patching fabric: Holes in the knees

 

I have patched a number of holes in the knee over the years. I have noticed a few things about the patches that work best and are the most durable.

You need to make sure the base fabric you use for your patch is the same material as the item you are patching. You can add other fabric types and embellishments on top of the base fabric but the base fabric needs to be the same. Why do they need to be the same? So they wear out at the same rate and so they stretch in the same way.  When I put fabrics together that were not the same together the result was always a new rip.

I also noticed that I need to make my patches much larger than most store patches or tutorials I have followed online. Why would I say this? When a hole is created in fabric it is often from extra wear on a particular spot repeatedly. In the center you have the weakest point of your hole then as you expand outwards from the hole you eventually get to fabric that is not weakened from wear.

When you patch fabric you need to go out until you reach a point of strength again in the fabric. If you need an example of this look at a pair of pants that have a hole in the knee. Put your hands on the pants starting at the hole and move you hand slowly away from the hole. You should feel a gradation in the fabric strength. The fabric will be at it’s thickest when you have reached uncompromised material again. You could also look at the color of the fabric. Worn jeans that have holes in the knees are lighter in color as they get closer to the hole. You can reverse it and find the original color of the pants.

I have also noticed that I need to create a quilted affect with the patch.  When I just sewed along the outside edges of the patch it would wear out at this new seam.  Instead when I would sew down the patch not only along the edge but join the fabric in multiple locations across the patch and beyond the edges of the patch it distributed the stress of the joined fabric. I saw this on a pair of pants I patched for our youngest son. He likes Spiderman and he likes to climb things a lot, so we call him Spiderman Jr. When he got a hole in his knee I asked what kind of patch he wanted on the pants. I was not surprised when he answered, “Spiderman”. I made a Spiderman patch I cut it out from some left over scrap material I had. What I did different with this patch is I added a web for Spiderman to be hanging on around the patch. That patch was so strong because I had created so many anchor points with that web that he actually outgrew those pants rather than broke the patch or created a new hole in his pants.

I hope this helps you spend less time re-patching fabric multiple times as I did in the beginning.

Example:

Feel fabric of the knee from the hole out till I get to strong denim again. This also matches where the pants are no longer faded.

     

Take scrap denim and cut to the size need to sew strength for equal strength. Cut denim to the appropriate size.

Cut out any extra embellishments that are desired and sew these on top the of the denim scrap patch.

 

 

 Pin patch to denim jeans and sew down the quilted pattern. In this case and slowly expanding star shape through all the layers of the fabric.