How To: Add Knee Patches to Jeans

If your kids are constantly wearing the knees out of their pants or jeans, you are going to love this easy to follow tutorial. This patching technique is useful for all trousers, big or small, but especially small.

You will need:
The Jeans or pants you need to patch
Fabric for the patches - I used a piece of denim from an old pair of Mr Man's jean
Sewing machine
Seam ripper/un-picker
Thread, Scissors, Pins
1. Iron the jeans (these don't have holes but they are very thin in the knees).
2. Cut out two matching patches, they can be any shape you like.
3. Lay them over the knees to check size and position.
4. (optional) You may like to machine stitch a criss cross pattern on the patches to add interest.5. Now this the secret trick to make everything a whole lot easier, even on the smallest of garments. You need to unpick the side seam of the leg. On jeans choose the seam that isn't double stitched. Unpick as far as you can without unpicking cuff. This means you can open the leg out flat to comfortably use the sewing machine.6. Pin patches into place.
7 & 8. Now with a thread that matches the colour of the patch use a wide zig zag stitch (satin stitch) to sew the patch onto the leg.
9. Turn jeans inside out and resew the seam that you previously unpicked. Zig Zag or serge raw edge if desired.
10. All done! Check out how groovy these old jeans look.

Don't limit yourself to making patches solely out of denim, why not try patches in prints or fun shapes like a heart or star?

Thank you to Heidi, a fabulous facebook Liker who requested this tutorial on the My Poppet fan page:

'Cintia, I have a request. My little boys jeans ALWAYS end up with holes in the knees.....I'd love to patch them up but know they wouldn't end up looking the way I wanted them too. Seeing as you are a jeanious (ha!) I was hoping maybe you could do a tutorial on it?!
I'd love you forever....'

I'm glad I could help Heidi out.

If you have any tutorial requests, feel free to leave a comment here or over on the facebook page and I'll see what I can do :)