Tough Man Work Pants Mending – Continued

It is a joy to have a son-in-law in carpenter’s training who works so hard that he makes LOTS of holes in his work pants.

Sometimes I’m honored to get to RE-mend some pairs.  You can go back to my post of   July 19,2017  and can offer this additional advice.  Plan on work/wear-tested updates as they reveal themselves!

Below, see the current challenges – and my solutions.  I didn’t think to take photos until after mended, so the stitching you’re seeing is from the mending process.    In general, for several reasons, I decided to try patching on the TOP side rather than the bottom.  I used polyester thread and a size 90 Jeans/Denim Needle.  I’ll talk about a tension frustration in a bit….

For patches, KEEP KEEP KEEP a ‘past mending’ pair of pants of various colors!!!!  I can’t stress that enough.

LOTS of Small Holes

I had mended lots of these holes before – but this time, thee were even MORE.  He says that his pants ‘catch’ on sharp edges yielding the holes.  I suppose it is a good thing his pants protect his legs!!! You can see the ones I had patched – with patch being put on the inside of the leg during the first mending.

Outside Mending Stitching

Leave Inside Patch Edges Long Enough

Here is the knee patch  (2nd generation) that I did for his ‘bending knee’ of good old polyester doubleknit.  This version, I made a double layer with polyester batting inside for some padding, and stitched diagonally with triple straight stitch for strength.  What ‘failed’ was that I had not left enough excess fabric at the lower edge and/or didn’t stitch it strongly enough.  Hence, I had to do the reinforcing stitching as you see on the patch now.  Below, is stitching from yet another patch.

Bobbin Threading/Tension

My machine had just been used all day by others for a Days for Girls Work Day – and I didn’t double check the lower threading before starting.  See the very UN-Balanced tension on the zigzag at the upper edge and upper left side.

This clearly shows that the bobbin tension was too loose – or non-existent, as it is being pulled up to the top side.  The lighter trey is the needle, and therefore looks way too tight – just an unbalanced mess.

Below, see what the bobbin threading looked like – very WRONG.

Note that the thread is coming straight from the bobbin out the large area of the case.  It is not under the metal tension clamp at all, thus completely without ‘pull’ or tension.  Therefore, the upper thread just pulled it all up to the top.

For proper threading of a bobbin in an auxillary case, if you look at the thread, it must rotate CLOCKWISE if you are pulling the thread and looking AT the bobbin.  However, it MUST go through the slot that you see at the left side of bobbin case, and get pulled behind the metal clamp.  See how that looks in the photo below.  AND, how the zig zag stitching is then properly balanced.

I hope some of this information will be helpful to you as you do the BORING but quite useful task of mending.  Please comment below with any and all input for the benefit of everyone.

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