Boro patches breathe new life into old jeans

I love these jeans, but I’m not loving the rip on the knee. Time to riffle through my cotton scraps and get the needle and thread out.

To make a boro and sashiko patch you’ll need:

• Scraps of cotton, linen, or denim fabric
• Sashiko thread
• Sashiko needle
• Pins
• Fabric marker (I’m so impressed with these. Inexpensive and you get loads of refills)
• Ruler

Select your fabrics. I went with shades of blue with a hint of rust. Cut or tear them, making sure one is at least an inch bigger on all sides than the opening you want to patch. You can patch on top of the hole or insert the piece of fabric into the leg of the jeans, as I did here.

Pin it. I’ve gone on to pin more pieces of the material randomly. Make sure they overlap each other by about 1cm (half an inch). Attaching them to just the front of the leg is tricky, and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll stab yourself a few times, but hang in there you’re nearly ready to sew!

Start stitching in any pattern or direction. Thread the needle with sashiko cotton and tie a double knot at the end of the single thread. If you want you can draw a straight line to follow for the first row. I ended up drawing numerous lines as the marker magically disappears when you iron over it.
Insert the needle from the inside of the leg. Run the needle through the patch and denim for the length of the needle until you have multiple stitches on it, then pull the thread all the way through.

Continue to the edge of the patch, finishing the row with your needle and thread on the wrong side.

Start the next row about 5mm below by bringing your needle back through the fabric and stitch in parallel in the opposite direction.

Continue sewing rows until you’ve covered the desired area. Secure the thread by doing a couple of back stitches on the reverse side, or, as I’ve done here, tie a double visible knot.