DIY – Hand Sewing – Repairing Clothes – Fixing Hole in Pocket and Leg Seam Tear on Two Heavy Work Pants

So as I was working on a new project, my older brother came to visit and he requested that I repair two of his work pants – needed to be done as he was working a shift that night – and he had an extra request. He started with, ‘can you cut this into 20 cm squares’. I looked at the scrap of bed sheet that he handed to me. I started there as it seemed the easiest task at the time. I found my centimeter ruler and measured 20 cm. I asked him if it had to be accurate and he explained he was using them for a dog training exercise where he would hide objects under the sheets and the dog would have to find which sheet hid the object. So the answer was: no it didn’t need to be accurate. Exactly the answer I wanted to hear, so I shoddily chopped squares some barely resembling a 20 cm square.

From there he added a request, ‘can you stitch the edges of the squares as well?’

I gave him an incredulous look. Cutting them is one things and took under five minutes. Stitching each square which when looking at the pile I estimated 50 squares! I was like, ‘do you know how long that will take? That’s an all day job!’ He pouted and then showed me what he needed repairing on his work pants.

There was a hole in the pocket of one pant and the other pant had a tear at the knee leg seam. As I looked at them I thought, it was going to be tricky to machine sew these as the pants were already constructed. My brother said he wasn’t fussed about the look of them as he was more concerned about them being functional. My sewing machine is quite small and has a little arm and I had to squeeze the leg over the arm as I would when squeezing fabric of an elastic casing onto a safety pin before pulling the other end to thread it through. Once I had the leg gathered up and I was able to squeeze the part I needed to sew under the foot and needle, the actual sewing/stitching job was quite quick once I had the pants on the machine. Zoom-Zoom and both pants were done.

My older brother had left me to repair the pants to run some more errands and as I had completed the pants so quickly I thought I’d make a start on his other request, while I waited for him to return. It took a while and there only ended up being 39 squares but I overcast the edges of every single square. Everything was finished by the time my older brother came to pick up his pants.

He thanked me very much and continued on his way to get ready for his shift. I think sewing is such a useful skill to learn and I’m so glad I am learning it. As before that, my older brother would have had to get his pants professionally repaired, usually for more than what the pants cost in the first place, or buy new pants. When working with dogs he has them jumping at him, so his clothes are under a lot of stress. I’m glad I was able to save him time, effort and money on fixing his two pants that maybe took five minutes to fix.

I’m able to repair my own clothes, things where the seam would fall out and I’d have in the past said, ‘oh it’s ruined!’ and thrown it out. I’m so glad I’m learning and can take up my own pants now, fix buttons and tears. It’s really satisfying and definitely easier on the purse.

DIY – Machine Sewing – Kwik Sew Pattern 3793 – Male Pajama Pants – Part 16 – Finished!

After the elastic casing was complete, I did the final measurements for how much elastic I would need, and then I threaded the elastic through. I sewed the edges of the elastic together thoroughly, closed the casing. This finished the waistband. The last step was finishing the leg hems which is very easy. I was starting to run out of thread by this point so I had to switch from the orange and red combo I had been using to a red and red combo. It still looked good and I thought it was kinda cool to have contrasting stitching. The orange and reds still tie in with the dinosaurs but don’t blend in with the powder blue of the background.

 

Once the hem line was done that was it! Project complete! And they fit my partner perfectly! Although the finished photo makes them look short, my partner is around 6ft something so they’re actually quite long! He says they are really comfortable, his only concern is that the fly doesn’t have a button to hold his junk in when he decides to not wear underwear. I told him sincerely that I didn’t see a problem with this scenario. He asked me if I would like to adjourn to the bedroom.

DIY – Machine Sewing – Kwik Sew Pattern 3793 – Male Pajama Pants – Part 15 – Waistband

After the outer leg seams and inner leg seams were complete the project was really looking like a pair of pajama pants now so naturally I was getting excited again to complete the project.

I overcast the edge of the waist and then folded it over to create a kind of hem. I would use this to create a casing for the elastic band to go into. I pressed the edges to make the fold a bit more permanent while I was working.

The above picture shows better how the waistband will look after the casing is complete. Doing the elastic casing is very easy and I learned this part of sewing when I tackled the toddler top and skirt, you can read about that project by clicking here.

DIY – Machine Sewing – Kwik Sew Pattern 3793 – Male Pajama Pants – Part 14 – Stitching ‘Dem Seams

 

In the photo above you can clearly see how it seems a bit ruffled after stitching. This concerned me, but after going through the following steps it all ended up okay.

 

 

 

Like with all the other seams I had to over cast, but luckily I didn’t have to waste time trimming a long seam line. I’m pretty sure that would have taken ages. But doing the actual stitching is really fun and goes by so quickly.

As always to finish the seam, one must press. So the iron and ironing board came out again. There were a lot of dinosaurs that had lost their heads and tails in the seam creation process unfortunately…

DIY – Machine Sewing – Kwik Sew Pattern 3793 – Male Pajama Pants – Part 13 – Pinning

With the front left and right pieces sewn together and the back left and right pieces sewn together, the next step was put the back and fronts together.

I pinned the inner leg section together and then the outer leg sections, matching the notches. This took a little while but I was really excited while pinning because I could see that I was nearing completion now. And because of that excitement, I kept accidentally pricking myself…

Nothing so deep I actually drew blood though, so I’m seeing the positive in the negative with that one. After pinning was complete, I took the project to my sewing machine and stitched the edges. It seemed to have ruffled a little bit after stitching and it made me concerned…

DIY – Machine Sewing – Kwik Sew Pattern 3793 – Male Pajama Pants – Part 12 – Back to Back

After I had cut the notches I pinned the butt seam together and sewed.

 

Just like with the groin seam, I marked where I would cut the excess fabric off with a HB pencil. After I had marked the dotted line I trimmed the seam.

As I had already found with the groin seam, I used the zig-zag setting on number 6 to get the larger zig-zag and stitched the edge of the seam, overcasting it.

 

This is what it looked like joined together.

 

The most important part of finishing a seam is pressing it. If you don’t press the seam it won’t sit right and your project will just look messy. Even though I don’t like ironing, I actually don’t mind pressing the seams.

 

DIY – Machine Sewing – Kwik Sew Pattern 3793 – Male Pajama Pants – Part 11 – Fly Done

I was really surprised with the look of the fly so far and was kinda like, ‘oh my gosh look what I made!’ hahaha

I then had to sew at the top and bottom of the fly to keep it together.

And before I could move onto the next step I had to bring back out the pattern paper as I had forgotten to cut the notches as I usually do.

DIY – Machine Sewing – Kwik Sew Pattern 3793 – Male Pajama Pants – Part 10 – Mark, Trim, Zig-Zag, Overcast

After matching the groin seam together and sewing it, I then marked a dotted line with a HB pencil.

 

I then trimmed along the line.

The next step was to overcast the edge so I turned the dial onto the zig-zag setting.

 

 

After sewing along the edge I found that the zig-zag was too short so I stepped it up to zig-zag 6 and ran over the edge again and thought this was a lot better.

DIY – Machine Sewing – Kwik Sew Pattern 3793 – Male Pajama Pants – Part 9 – Pin & Check

After pinning, I had to fold and pin again. I think this was to create an kind of double seam, layer thing. I dunno, I’m not an expert I just enjoy myself! Lol! :p

So these are the two front  halves. This elaborate folding and pinning will eventually lead to a fly for the pajama pants. I have never made a fly before so it’s been an interesting process so far. I think next I can finally get into some sewing. Hopefully…

 

DIY – Machine Sewing – Kwik Sew Pattern 3793 – Male Pajama Pants – Part 8 – Measure, Trim, Measure, Pin

  

For this step I had to measure 5/8″ in from the edge and place pins running down so that I could later fold it along that line. I quickly found that my initial cut was really wonky, so before I could measure I first had to straighten the edges.

  

Once the edge was significantly straighter as you can see from the first two pictures. I then placed a strip of washi tape on my inch ruler. We work in centimeters in Australia but I have found that most sewing and scrapbooking supplies and instructions are in inches, so I’ve had to invest in an inch ruler and try to adapt. From there, I measured down the edge and placed pins in a line parallel to the edge.