Repair your jeans with sashiko

When you commute to work by bike every day, it may occur that your jeans start showing off saddle-shaped wear and tear. You an then reinforce your jeans in those places with extra fabric, allowing you to keep on cycling with it for a while longer. And that's exactly what I did with this pair of trousers, with an additional sashiko pattern embroidered on top.

Do you have a pair of jeans lying around that you would like me to repair for you? Feel free to drop me a line, and together we can find a solution. Are you willing to give it a go yourself? Then you can find some tips and tricks below to help you do so.

How to repair your jeans with sashiko

1. Examine your trousers carefully, and decide whether you want to patch them up on the outside, or on the inside. For these jeans, I opted to repair them from the inside out.
   
2. Decide what fabric you will use to reinforce these trousers. Best practice is to choose a fabric that is made of the same materials. Repair jeans with jeans, linen with linen, etc. I used some jeans patches from another worn pair of trousers in the same colour. Not that the colour matters all that much if you are repairing from the inside out, since it's barely visible on the outside.
3. Cut your patches to the right size, and pin them on the inside of your trousers, covering the worn areas.
   
4. Decide what type of sashiko pattern you want to transfer to your jeans, and draw the accompanying grid on your fabric, on the right side. I went for a yosegi pattern or tumbling blocks, a pattern drawn on a 1:2 grid. Draw your grid first, and then draw the lines you'll be embroidering in a different colour or with a thicker line. There are different ways in which you can draw a grid. You can opt for heat erasable pens, or for water soluble transfer paper. For these trousers, I experimented with both, and they both have their pros and cons. Because the worn area was so large and bulky, that added some extra challenges as well. So in the end, I decided to work in small patches, to make it easier for myself.
5. Start sewing. Use a running stitch, and make sure you push your needle through the different layers of fabric. You can use sewing thread, embroidery thread or sashiko thread in any colour you like, the choice is yours. I opted for gold-coloured sewing thread that I had used before to repair jeans.
6. When you're done, remove all pins and rinse or iron the grid away.

All ready to jump on that bike again!

Do you have a worn pair of jeans lying around that needs fixing? Feel free to drop me a line, and together we can find a solution.