holy mole those are some holey jeans

I distinctly remember having a pair of wooden soled slip on leather flats that were my absolute favorite shoes to wear and in the 1st grade they got too small. I wore them until I couldn't stand it anymore and my mom made me throw them away because they were so worn out no one would even want them as hand me downs. You would have to know me a little better to understand my bizarre attachment to something like shoes but none the less my daughter has the same affinity for different reasons to some special articles of clothing.

Nadine has a favorite pair of jeans, she would wear them every day if I let her and they definitely reflected that in their beaten and shredded knees. It got to the point where the wear and tare no longer looked stylish but just plain shredded. The rest of the jeans still have plenty of life so today I devised a plan. 1) pick out a shirt that is too small for her but has cute fabric/decals 2) patch up those holes!

I decided to re-enforce the inside of the tare area using the sleeve material from the shirt, that way it was already double layered. I cut off the bottom 4 inches of each sleeve then sewed around the thinned area where the jeans were still thick and not worn. Some of the frayed areas I re-enforced with a few stitches as well. I couldn't decide on whether to use the light or dark blue thread so I double threaded the needle and it actually mimicked the coloring of the denim pretty well. Then I turned the pants inside out and cut off the excess material so it wouldn't snag or tare when she thrusts her legs into the pants in a hurry to run out the door every morning =)

The left knee had a much larger tare in it so I cut out one of the butterflies and the body was narrow so I re-enforced it with a small piece of the sleeve material and stitched all the way around the body before then attaching the butterfly strategically over the thinnest and structurally weakest part of the knee are.

All done! Took me a little less then 2 hours and it looks pretty darn cute =) Nadine is one happy camper to not have to give up her favorite jeans...for now ;)