I Can Mend a Hole in a Back Pocket Three Different Ways. This is My First Favorite!

Just as I promised, here’s my other favorite way to mend a hole in a back pocket!

I’ve got two favorite ways to mend a hole in a back pocket (and a third way that I don’t like as much but that also works great!), and recently, my kid presented me with a pair of pants that had a hole in each back pocket, allowing me to put my two favorite methods into direct competition. She keeps her phone in one back pocket and her wallet in the other, so as a bonus, the holes are nearly symmetrical and nearly identical. It’s the perfect scenario for an experiment!

With the kid’s permission, I mended one hole with a patch on the outside, and one hole with a patch on the inside. Both methods require the same materials and take approximately the same amount of time. They’re also both very easy, with the trickiest part of the outside patch the folding and creasing, and the trickiest part of the inside patch its placement. I showed you how to do the outside patch last week, so this time, let’s discuss the inside patch!

This inside patch method involves just what it says: instead of patching the outside of the hole, you’ll be patching the inside of the hole. The patch will still show through the hole, but will be far less visible than a patch outside the hole would be. What WILL be pretty visible–depending on thread color!–is all the reinforcement stitching that stabilizes the hole and keeps the patch attached. Depending on your goals and your skill set, the stitching can be messy (but effective!) or highly decorative.

Here’s what you need to complete this mend:

Materials

• patch. Match the weight of the existing fabric, but otherwise the choice is up to you! If you match the patch fabric very well, the patch will be quite inconspicuous, but a visible patch can be really cute, too.
• thread. This is the most visible part of this mend, so your choice is very important here. Well-matched thread color will be nearly invisible, but you also can do such cute things with visible mending.
• cutting and sewing supplies. This is a hand-sewing project, so requires a hand-sewing needle and thread scissors. Pins are helpful, but optional. You don’t particularly need an iron, and you definitely don’t need fusible interfacing, although you can use it it–just keep it away from the hole itself!

Step 1: Prep and place the patch.

Cut the patch to be wider than the hole in both length and width, then insert it into the back pocket and place it behind the patch. This is the trickiest part of the whole project, since you have to make sure that the patch sufficiently overlaps the hole, and you have to do it mostly by feel.

Once the patch is in place, you can pin it to make sure it stays secure, but it should stay very well even without pinning. If you do pin, make sure that you haven’t caught the inside of the pants with your pin–the last thing you want to do is sew your pocket shut!

Step 2: Hand-stitch the patch in place.

This is the fun–and a little bit time-consuming!– part!

Thread your needle with the thread you’ve chosen, and then simply begin to stitch the patch to the pocket. Focus on stabilizing the hole, particularly the raw edges of the hole, but stitch over the entire patch area, the more stitches, the better. Every stitch that you put in, however messily, strengthens the fabric and reinforces the mend.

When you’re finished hand-sewing, turn the pocket inside-out and trim away any excess patch material, being careful not to cut through any of your stitching.

I asked my kid for her final opinion (since these are her pants, lol!), and she said that she liked the look of the inside patch better, but thought that the outside patch was fine, too. I will say that the inside patch seems less visible from a distance, but these grey jeans were tricky to match, and if I’d been able to match the outside patch fabric perfectly to the pants it might well be just as inconspicuous.

For what it’s worth, I volunteer monthly with my local public library to mend items that patrons bring in, and I use the inside patch method almost exclusively during Mending Days. It’s especially easy when someone needs a mend in the knee or thigh, since I can use the zigzag stitch on my sewing machine to do alllll that stitching in just a few seconds. If it’s a rip that I’m mending, not a hole, often the patch isn’t visible at all afterwards, and if I happen to have a thread color that perfectly matches the fabric, the stitching is barely visible, as well.

Which method do YOU prefer?

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I Am My Younger Child's Bespoke Seamstress, and Other Adventures in Parenting College Students

To be fair, serving as my kid's bespoke seamstress is high-key my favorite thing EVER. All I apparently really want with my life is for people to want me to sew things for them.

And the little kid, at least, is happy to oblige!

First, some mending:

I don't know if it's secret sensory issues or just the fact that I raised picky parsnips, but both kids have the absolute worst time trying to find clothes they like. I lecture often on how many pants and shirts, etc., ought to make up a minimum wardrobe, and yet both kids regularly go off to college with half that and then bitch that all their clothes are constantly falling apart.

Like, YEAH, if you're wearing and therefore washing a garment all the time, it's obviously going to wear out more quickly! THIS IS WHY YOUR MOTHER TOLD YOU TO BRING MORE CLOTHES TO SCHOOL!

And don't even get me started about coats. One kid insists that she has not and will not ever find a coat she likes, and pretty much just layers infinite hoodies. In a Philadelphia winter, no less. I've told her that at some point her professors are going to decide that she must be too impoverished to buy herself a coat and take up a collection, and she'll wake up one morning to find that they've put a gift bag with a brand-new coat in it outside her dorm room door. It won't be to her taste, but she'll nevertheless have to wear it until graduation lest she seem ungrateful.

The other kid does have a single coat that she approves of enough to wear--not that it's warm enough for her own Ohio winters, but whatever--but over Winter Break one day I got too close to the kid while she was wearing it, and I was all, "...do you ever wash this thing?"

"Sometimes," she said.

"How?"

"Cold and Delicate, like the label says."

I said, "Yeah... no," and then wrestled it off her. Girl was wearing this thing not only to class every day, but also to the horse barn twice a week and the Humane Society once a week, not to mention on environmental science field trips and throughout all the other horrors of college life. And then she was barely washing it, because the label said she had to treat it fancy!

Like, it's a COAT, Bro. And not even a puffer coat. It can take a little bit of temperature. I soaked it for a day in hot water with a half-cup of Biz stirred in, closed inside my cooler to keep the water hot. I will not describe to you the state of the water when I finally drained it, but it was something. Afterwards, I stuffed it inside a mesh laundry bag and washed it on Warm and Regular with two rinses with my regular laundry detergent, more Biz, a half-cup of ammonia, and a fistful of citric acid in the rinse compartment because I have the hardest water on the planet. 

Let me tell you that this coat was squeaky clean when it got done. Not a whiff of horse or dog or polluted creek to be found! The faux fur was a little stiff after air drying, but after I went over it with a lint rake it was also soft and fluffy again. 

This is your sign to become as obsessed with the r/laundry subreddit as I am.

Along with the mending and the laundry, I actualized the little kid's dream of stitching just the sleeves of a long-sleeved T-shirt inside the sleeves of a short-sleeved T-shirt, so that the kid could get the layered T-shirt look without having to wear layered T-shirts on her body:

*cough, cough* sensory issues *cough*

I thought the stitch lines ended up a little too visible to fool anyone, but the kid said she liked it, so whatever.

My biggest sewing project, though, was for a kid who I don't even know yet!

In the younger kid's first care package of the school year, I sent her and her roommates a set of hoodies that I'd appliqued with their school name in their class colors. I'm VERY chuffed that all the kids seem to love them, and even more chuffed that when I offered to make a similar hoodie for the younger kid's Hell Child (it's a school thing, don't worry about it) in that kid's class colors, the younger kid was super enthusiastic about it.

So I thrifted a hoodie, double-checked the one I'd made for the kid so I could remember how on earth I'd made it--

I've asked the kid several times if the loose threads are an issue, because I'd worried they wouldn't like it, but she says that all the hoodie recipients are super into that look. So yay!

--and then made a red version for the kid's baby red!

I used Heat n' Bond instead of Pellon for this project (I miss you, Joann's!), and although I'm worried it won't wear as well as the Pellon, omg it was SO much easier to apply.

Honestly, I think it turned out even cuter than the blue version, thanks to the matching hoodie color:

And now the kids are back at school for the Spring semester, and I have nobody to sew for but boring old me, sigh. I did impulse buy this giant bow pattern so I can make a giant Valentine's bow that I do not need but will nevertheless decorate my front door with, so that will keep me entertained for a few evenings, I guess.

Spam me with all your ideas for where I can put giant bows!

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I Can Mend a Hole in a Back Pocket Three Different Ways. This is My Second Favorite.

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

Mend that hole in your back pocket with an easy patch stitched to the outside.

Solve this debate for me!

If you want to fix a hole in the back pocket of a pair of pants, and you DON’T want to take the entire pocket off to do it, there are two main methods: patch the outside of the pocket, or patch the inside of the pocket.

Both are easy enough to do start to finish within an hour (or one episode of The Pitt, if that’s how you’re measuring time, ahem). Both require the same hand-sewing skills–which is hardly any, lol! The outside patch requires folding down its raw edges, which is fiddly, but the inside patch requires placing the patch while it’s inside a pocket, which is fiddly. The outside patch has a more visible patch, but the inside patch has more visible stitching.

I never can work out which I like better, and whenever I do this mend for someone else, I feel like they’re generally pretty evenly split, as well–some people really like the outside patch, and some people really like the inside one.

So I’m going to show them both to you, and YOU’RE going to decide which one is better!

First up: here’s how to patch the outside of a back pocket.

Materials

You will need:

• patch. For this project, the patch consists of a piece of similar material and weight, a couple of inches longer in both dimensions than the hole.
• matching thread. Use regular sewing thread that matches the patch and/or the pants.
• iron. This will help you crease the edges of the patch that you fold in.
• sewing supplies. Scissors, pins, etc.

Step 1: Prep the patch.

I didn’t end up using the patch, above, because I came to my senses and realized that it’s the correct weight but it doesn’t match AT ALL, but it at least gives you an idea about what size the patch should be in relation to the hole.

Fold all sides of the patch to the wrong side, then iron to crease. This will hide the raw edges of the patch.

Optional, but you can take a few minutes at this point to tack the folds down on the patch. It’s not necessary and I didn’t do it, but it will keep the folds in place while you stitch the patch over the hole, and that can be very helpful.

Step 2: Hand-sew the patch over the hole.

You barely have to know how to sew to do this mend!

Start by placing the patch, folds down, over the hole. Center the hole under the patch so it’s well-covered. You can pin it in place, but it’s not super necessary.

Baste the patch to the pocket just to keep it in place, and to tack the folds in place if you didn’t do that in the previous step. A running stitch is fine for this.

After the patch is basted, your entire job is simply to stitch the snot out of that patch. The more stitches, no matter how sloppy and amateur, the better! A running stitch is fine, and so is a back stitch. Heck, you could just do a bunch of French knots if you wanted! The idea is simply to reinforce the fabric around that hidden hole and to keep the patch in place, and every stitch, no matter how messy, is a stitch that will do just that.

You do have to be VERY careful that you sew through ONLY that back pocket and patch, and not also through the back of the pants. This requires keeping a hand inside the pocket as you sew, and, at least based on my personal experiences, also requires pricking yourself at least four times. Fun fact: hydrogen peroxide is a champ for getting blood out of clothing!

You also want to make sure that you’re stitching enough around the edges that the patch won’t come loose or the creases unfolded, but if you’re laying down as many stitches as I’m telling you to, that won’t be an issue. I’m serious: sew for a WHOLE ENTIRE episode of The Pitt!

Even though you’re not repairing the actual hole, as such, this mend works because you’re stabilizing the hole, reinforcing the fabric around it, and strengthening the entire area. Every stitch you put in is one more bit of strength you’re adding.

If you love to hand-stitch and/or you’re very good at it, check out sashiko mending for this project. You can make some beautiful patterns with your stitches, as visible or invisible as you’d prefer.

For even more visible mending fun, play with thread color and fabric color and shape. I don’t recommend double-sided fusible interfacing for this project, unless it’s little scraps that you’re using instead of basting, but that shouldn’t stop you from cutting your patch into a cute shape, because you’ll be stitching it down with lots and lots of stitches.

When that episode of The Pitt is finished, you’ll have a sturdy patch on the outside of your back pocket. Stay tuned for next week, when I show you how to sew a sturdy patch on the INSIDE of your back pocket, and then you can see which one you like better!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, road trips, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!