Save Your Favorite Jeans With This Easy Embroidery Hole Repair Hack

Made By April
by Made By April
7 Materials
15 Minutes
Easy

In this step-by-step tutorial, I’ll show you how to repair holes in jeans with embroidery. It’s a cute way to add your personal touch to your jeans while also fixing them. Let’s get started.

Tools and materials:

  • Jeans to repair
  • 1 small coin
  • Tailor’s chalk pencil
  • Small scrap fabric (just bigger than the hole)
  • Embroidery thread
  • Scissors
  • Hand embroidery needle
Before photo

1. Draw a circle

Place a small coin over the hole and trace its circumference using a tailor's chalk pencil.

Drawing a circle

2. Make a fabric backing for the hole

Cut a small, rectangular piece of scrap fabric that’s a bit larger than the hole.

Making a fabric backing

3. Begin by embroidering a cross

Place that piece of fabric inside the jeans, underneath the hole.


Thread your embroidery needle with embroidery thread and pierce through the jeans at the top of the circle from beneath, pulling the thread upward.

Embroidering a cross

Then, pull the needle through the hole and out through the other end of the marked circle.

Embroidering a cross

Next, make a stitch from the bottom of the circle to hole at the center, to form a longer line.

Embroidering a cross

Here’s that line:

Embroidering a cross

Now make the same two stitches in two parts to cross the line horizontally.

Embroidering a cross

4. Fill in

Next, fill in all around with single stitches from the center of the cross to the edge of the circle.

Filling in the cross

Keep going until you get a snowflake shape like this:

Filling in the cross

5. Embroider the edges to turn your snowflake into a flower

Pierce the circumference at one spoke of the snowflake, bringing the needle back through, to the next spoke up.


Then, twist the thread underneath the needle. ( See video 1:38 -1:45.)

Embroidering the edges

Pull the thread all the way through.

Embroidering the edges

Then, take your needle back through the center of the snowflake and out through the outer edge of the spoke below.

Embroidering the edges

6. Repeat

Repeat the same process of step 5 for the next spokes below (pierce at the outer edge of the spoke.


Bring the needle through at the end of the adjacent spoke, twist the thread under the needle and pull.

Embroidering the edges

Keep going around your snowflake.

Embroidering the edges

Do this until your snowflake becomes a flower.

Embroidery flower

7. Knot to secure

Flip your jeans inside out with the needle on the underside. 

Knotting embroidery flower

Then, thread the needle under one of the spokes, pulling it through partially to leave a loop.

Knotting embroidery flower

Pull the needle through the loop and pull all the way to make a knot. Repeat this knot about two more times on other spokes.

Knotting embroidery flower

Finally, cut the excess thread and your jeans are finished!

Completed flower embroidery hole repair

Embroidery hole repair

This embroidery hole repair technique is an easy and fun alternative to using a patch or spending money to have your garment mended.


It’s relatively simple, and you don’t need many supplies. I hope this was helpful for you.


For another clever upcycling idea, check out my post on a quick and easy hack to shorten a t-shirt.

Suggested materials:
  • Jeans to repair
  • 1 small coin
  • Tailor’s chalk pencil
See all materials

The author may collect a small share of sales from the links on this page.

Comments
Join the conversation
Next