Oct 31

Oct 31 Perfectly Imperfect Jeans

Perfectly imperfect describes me "to a T," and I relished in it. Growing up, my family rarely threw clothing away. If it was fixable, faded, or patchable, we fixed it, dyed it, and patched it. My mother is a finicky laundress, so our clothing rarely got ruined in the laundry. They usually wore out first. But until they were threadbare, my mother would patch them with remnants of calico fabrics from the 1950s and 60s. The inner thighs of my jeans were always the first place to wear holes. They fell victim to my adolescent, chubby thighs. Mom's simple solution was to stitch a patch up one side of the inseam, through the crotch, and down the other. They could be periwinkle with a profusion of tiny bluebells or bright red it just depended on what remnants were available to her. The patch in the crotch of my jeans was visible from every angle, and I wasn't at all embarrassed to wear them. I liked being different.

When companies started selling distressed jeans, I thought, "Where was this when I was a kid?" My mother could have been making a killing selling our jeans! I've tried buying distressed jeans but paying forty to six hundred dollars for frowzy jeans pains me. Plus, I'm always cold, and the air breezes past my knees and butt cheeks through those gaping holes. It is too much to endure. I also worry that I will get my foot caught in the hole at the knee one day as I put the jeans on, and I will fall hard like a domino! Thwack! I can hear it now, "How did she break her hip?" How embarrassing would it be to break a hip while trying to be hip?

With that thought in mind, and with the inspiration from my friend Bee, @belindaaspinall, who turned me on to @ZenStitching on Instagram, I bought inexpensive distressed jeans from UNIQLO, and I began to patch them with remnant fabric and embroidery thread using Kantha stitching. I basted the patch fabric to the inside of the jeans over the hole. I then turned the jeans inside out and stitched around the perimeter of the hole with embroidery thread. I drew grid lines over the area with a washable sewing pen for a loose guideline, and I started stitching by running stitches through the patch, and the jeans, to stabilize the two fabrics. This was the result. I have a unique and stylish pair of distressed jeans that will keep me warm, and I won't break my hip getting into them!