My Recent Visible Mending Project

As I’ve moved more towards thrifting and slow fashion, I’ve also started appreciating the idea of visible mending to give worn clothes a longer life. For those of you who are new to the term ‘visible mending’ it is simply a way of mending your clothing where it is done in an eye-catching and creative way, rather than trying to blend in.

Examples could be embroidering over a hole in a sweater, running stitches in a bright color across an area that is wearing through, or what I did… adding colorful patches.

In my case, I have a favorite pair of jeans that fit so comfortably. But what was once a distressed look has now turned into a holey look. It got to the point that I had to be extra careful when shoving my foot into the leg hole, because I might just rip it through the knee-hole that had widened and widened.

This little project was SUPER easy and I’m very happy with how it came out, so I wanted to share it with you all!

First up, I stopped by the thrift store and found three cute denim items in the kid’s section in different prints for $6.25 total:

I also had a couple pairs of Jack’s old jeans that I had saved for future mending projects. I cut the items down into random patch sizes, getting rid of all the seams. In addition to the patches, I used a needle, navy thread, pins, and a pair of good sewing scissors.

Once I had all my materials ready, I cut all the random strings off the hole in my jeans, and placed one denim patch INSIDE the jeans.

I turned the jean’s leg inside-out and sewed that on by hand. Then, I played with various sizes and combinations of the fun-patterned patches until I found a combo I liked. I sewed them on one at a time, with navy blue thread.

Once I had the one side done, the other side looked a little plain. So, I added one more patch on top of a worn area. They weren’t worn all the way through into a hole, so I didn’t bother with a patch on the inside. I’ve been wearing them for the past month and I love that I gave my old jeans a new life!

If you’re looking for a way to add a little extra pizazz to your worn clothes, I think visible mending is a really fun way to do it!