Well, on our Thanksgiving trip we experienced our first hole in the knee of some jeans w/the children. Miss E was jumping on the trampoline at our host's home and when she got down, she had a hole in the knee of her jeans - hmm, it just happened, I hadn't noticed them being threadbare or anything....of course, with all the laundry around here, who has time to inspect knees of jeans?
Anyway, so we commenced preparations to patch said knee. The split went all the way across the knee area so a 'traditional' patch like the ones my Mom used to use just didn't seem like it would be big enough. Aha, how about a square of fabric - special fabric that Miss E picked out by herself...a trip to Hobby Lobby later and we had a quarter or maybe an eighth, I don't remember, of cute fabric that she chose. About this time, I noticed that Miss E's jeans were looking a tad too snug for my liking and we purchased one pair in the next size to see if she was ready for them. Yes, of course she was. So, all of her jeans immediately went to Miss A, who incidentally was ready for them as well, and Miss E got a couple more pairs of the larger size.
Now, that knee that needed to be patched belonged to Miss A now. Sigh. Did she want to use the same fabric? No, of course not :) Thankfully I had some fabric on hand that was perfect for her. So commenced my journey into jean patching...and decorating.
I dragged out my sewing machine from the box it was still sitting in (and has been in for the past 1.5 years - it was temporarily lost for a year in the garage between the past couple of moves, but relocated in the most recent) and commenced searching for thread and such. In the process, I ran across some cute decorative iron-ons I had purchased somewhere along the way a few years ago and thought it might be fun to put those on another pair of jeans - you just iron them on, right?
Well, the iron-ons went quickly and looked pretty cute - here are a pair I did for each of the girls:
Then a few more iron-ons - I think we might run out of jeans before we run out of decorations:
Then, the knee still needed to be patched so I cut out a square of "Princess" fabric for Miss A and sewed it on later in the evening. The next day I found more iron-ons, one of which had a "PRINCESS" iron-on included so I added that to the other leg and then upon closer inspection saw that the other knee was wearing pretty thin, so I might as well go ahead and patch it now - save time, right? Ha ha.
And, what of that original fabric purchased for Miss E's jeans (when they were still her jeans?) - well, can't let that go to waste, so we decorated another pair of Miss E's new jeans:
Fast forward a couple of days - Miss E wore the horse/cowboy jeans and they go through the wash. Yep, you guessed it - the iron-ons came partially off. Argh. What was I doing last night? Sewing them on so they would stay. (hence the black thread dangling aside the jeans in the pic above) So much for simple and easy :) But, they're still pretty cute so I guess it's worth it :)
Oh, I forgot to mention - the jeans w/the fabric squares on them - aside from that first princess patch that I actually sewed on by hand all the way around in tiny tiny stitches....I bought some "stitch witchery" and used it to "iron on" the patches and surrounding ribbon - those haven't gone through the wash yet - I'm holding my breath, well, not literally, but I sure hope they hold up better than the little iron-ons did! I'll keep you posted ;)
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