K's Working Jeans Mend

K leads a wonderfully physical life, and often in jeans. It was inevitable that her jeans would provide some feedback on all that activity at some point–rip! We walk, we squat, we sit, and consequently the butt on our jeans gets stretched and stressed more than lots of other places. Stressed 100% cotton denim gets fragile and hairy and eventually fails.

The tricky thing about this repair: keeping the tension between the long horizontal top area and the long horizontal bottom area. Even stout & sturdy denim is gets squidgy with long rips. I like to cut cardboard to about the width of the rear leg panel, and after positioning the patch under there, pin it all down every 1”+ or so, checking for tension. 

K was happy to have a visible mend. It’s absolutely up to you whether you’d like to call attention to your mended area, or have the repair fade into the overall vibe of the garment.