When Antoine, a reader like you, showed us how he patched his jeans and offered to write an article about it, we obviously said yes. Don’t hesitate to share your own work with us. Christopher.
Do you have a relic in your cupboard? An old, completely ruined pair of jeans that you no longer wear due to tears at the knees, but whose cut and patina are enough to make you smile again. Like an old friend that you no longer dare to take out but that you are not going to throw away.
I suggest you have a little fun by giving it a second life
A few seconds of history...
I am by no means an expert on the subject, so my definitions are very brief. In rural Japan until the beginning of the 20th century, cotton was rare. Also, women regularly patched or reinforced damaged clothing.
Boro is the patching technique, which can be compared to patchwork.
Sashiko is an embroidery technique that can be used to simply embellish pieces but also to repair or reinforce them.
A very very patched traditional garment – Ref.photo Gerrie Congdon / Heddels
The aesthetic interest is that a patchwork of indigo-dyed cotton pieces sewn together with more or less white threads will release an obvious harmony of colors. It is very easy to match with other basic pieces, denim, chambray, t-shirt and white or ecru sneakers.
We therefore avoid the clown effect that often goes with patchwork, while adding a big personality to a room. Hence the interest of certain creators in these techniques, with fairly inaccessible products at Visvim , or a concept applied to other color ranges at Maharishi .
A Visvim jacket... slightly out of budget for me
And an M65 Maharishi with the points clearly visible
For your viewing pleasure, I recommend the “ r/Sashiko ” and “ r/VisibleMending ” themes on Reddit.
…and a few hours of work
Here's an idea of what a complete novice (yours truly) can achieve with a few hours of work, a pair of well-worn jeans and a few dollars worth of equipment.
The result is imperfect, marked by my own errors and experiments, but I enjoy wearing these jeans again, my first raw, purchased in 2013 just after reading the book BonneGueule, and weathered according to the rules of the art. And then, I admit that I found this repair time particularly pleasant.
How to get started?
1. At the hardware level, you need:
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An embroidery needle , therefore a fairly large and long needle, with a large eye (the needle hole) because the thread is large.
Some needles are super sharp, others are rounded, I've tried both, the rounded one is harder to poke but will hurt your fingers less. -
White embroidery thread , or better, ecru. A stranded cotton works very well.
For this time I tested two different yarns with prices ranging from single to double, and I recommend that you take the best possible yarn. The difference is really visible, and a skein of yarn costs around two euros so don't sting here. A skein is enough for a piece or two. -
Basic yarn
with a fine needle for basting. -
Pieces of fabric dyed with indigo , if possible not too thick. You will struggle if you repair a large selvedge canvas with a canvas of the same thickness. A chambray or fine twill will suffice. Ask in store they sometimes have small parts sold at low prices
. - Designer pins .
- Tailor's chalk if you want very regular patterns
- Pinking scissors if you have them, to prevent the edges from fraying.
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A thimble
My basic McGyver of denim kit.
In short, you should get away with it for less than ten euros. Or discover hidden resources in the sewing box. And something to occupy your long winter evenings in confinement.
It's all in the preparation. That's an important lesson in sewing. Good preparation saves you a lot of hassle. It starts with a little reflection on your project
Do you want to see the patches visible in front of the denim or hidden (so we will only see the seams, except at the tear)? You can try different compositions and layering for your pieces, knowing one thing: if your jeans have torn in one place, the fabric is probably weakened across the entire area. So repair wide.
This is the second knee. The tear is located where the two pieces overlap. I have the perimeter well defined.
I started my work on my jeans with a repair on one knee. After an hour of work, I put my jeans back on, sat down... and the canvas cracked three centimeters above the repair. On the second knee I therefore saw very wide from the start.
You will also choose the embroidery pattern, the simplest being a cross pattern. With your scissors, cut your yoke(s) to the correct size. If you want to mark marks for a straight pattern, make a 5mm grid on the piece with your tailor's chalk.
On the jeans, cleanly cut off any threads hanging in and around the tear. Then iron your jeans with the patch, which makes it easier to put on. If you place the piece behind the denim, turn the pants inside out. Otherwise, leave it right side up.
You can pose your piece, first holding it with pins. Start by holding it around the tear, this will avoid creating a “pocket”. About ten pins should be enough, be careful not to prick the back of the leg. Check that the result suits you and remains as flat as possible.
To make your life easier and protect your fingers, you will replace these pins with a threader. Just grab your polyester thread
Here is a piece placed with the basting, note the additional stitches around the tear.
When you like the result, you can start embroidering.
2. Let's go for embroidery
Decorative sashiko embroidery is usually done in fine fabric, by pushing the thread onto the needle. We achieve several points in a row.
In our case with denim and thick thread, it is much more difficult, so I recommend that you only do one stitch at a time. Try to be as regular as possible.
Start with a length of thread between 1 meter and 1 meter 50. Pass your thread through the eye of the needle, leaving 5 centimeters emerging. To block the thread at the start, you will start your first row by going backwards on three points (1,2,3 below), then you come back to the front. Start with a middle line, follow the chalk line and off you go.
This is what you should see on the inside of the jeans (I made stitches on a scrap to show you, so there is no reinforcement piece)
This is what it looks like on the outside.
If you make a mistake, stay calm: you can always go back, releasing the needle and removing the misplaced part of the thread.
Move steadily, as long as your stitches are straight, aligned and evenly spaced you will be fine. Even though your stitches may have different lengths, it is the order of the whole that will make the work beautiful, and not the perfection of each element. A very Japanese philosophy, right?
You will realize it when you see that at some point something is happening: your stitches, even irregular, reveal a pattern, and it is very gratifying.
3. The reasons
There are many patterns in the Japanese tradition, often geometric, sometimes complex.
Personally I find the cross pattern already very pleasant, start there to get the hang of it before tackling more difficult ones.
The basic pattern, staggered crosses. Personal drawing.
You can also alternate with a blue thread on every other horizontal if you are teasing.
The same pattern, Malabar bigoût version.
The delicate persimmon flower
For my part, I wanted to be clever with a “khaki flower” pattern and I got a little lost in my calculations... hence an incomplete pattern on my right leg.
When I realized that I had messed up a bit, I chose not to extend the pattern over the entire piece...it doesn't work too bad overall.
This is what it should have been like in reality.
The very beautiful khaki flower pattern, in theory
As I like to understand my mistakes, I dissected this famous pattern, here is a summary diagram with the lines which alternate in white, those which repeat in red. We therefore have three alternating lines (in white) then two identical lines (in red) and we start again.
This is how it works. The lines remain the same and it is simply the offsets that create these flowers, with a center alternately square and cross. Bad, right?
The triple sashiko effect
This type of visible repair will give a lot of character to your jeans and make them a unique piece , which you will enjoy wearing because you have done it yourself, thus extending this very special relationship that you have built over the course of time. time and patina.
It is obviously a virtuous approach at an ecological and economic level, but also a learning experience for you. Knowledge gained which questions the need to replace... and which highlights your own potential to repair and bring back to life.
Finally, and you will only discover this by doing it: sashiko is an activity that takes time, and which brings a quite astonishing state of relaxation. Like other traditional Japanese arts, it induces a very pleasant form of active meditation.
You may want to go even further and add pieces to your clothes for fun, like Max_vdau , who was a source of motivation for my modest work:
Max's cool Edwin jacket, tastefully patched
I hope I have lit a flame in your home, and made you want, using one of your old clothes, to create, express yourself and above all have fun!
Come on, a fitpic for the road...
