How to fix ripped pants

A common occurrence with trousers if that they may at some point rip. This may be due to the pants getting caught on a wire, fence or latch. A sharp object will latch onto your pants as you are waling as you keep walking it tears the garment and by the time you realize what happened, the damage is done. The things about fabric being torn is that it is a very visible form of damage. If you want to look sharp you can’t just keep wearing them the way you might if the hem is a little frayed. It should also be noted that unlike most wear and tear, if the fabric is ripped outright this has nothing to do with how old the trousers are and more to do with whether your pants got caught on something sharp. For pants you bought recently, this is particularly frustrating since you may find yourself in a situation where your brand new or relatively new pants have been rendered unwearable since the fabric is visible torn. Fortunately, it is possible to mend torn trousers in a way that makes them good as new. The key ingredient is having access to the same fabric as way used to make the pants originally. This will ensure any alterations blend into the original fabric. If you don’t have access to the original fabric, you can use a similar colored fabric. The best place to find the exact same fabric is the pant itself. Ideally, at the hem there will be an adequately generous fabric allowance that includes enough fabric for you to replenish the torn fabric while still allowing for a modest fabric allowance. At Collar Replacement, we design pants that always include a slightly larger fabric allowance specifically in order to allow for future alterations and repairs. This is extremely useful, since you need to look far when contemplating how to repair your pants. We also add extra fabric at the seams in order to allow trousers to be let out should you outgrow them.

There is another creative solution that applies if you have multiple pants from the same retailer. When faced with the wear and tear whether they are ripped, the cuffs or hem has frayed. You can ‘sacrifice’ one pair of pants and use that pair as spare fabric for future mending and alterations since you will be using the exact same fabric used to make the pants to begin with. If you bought multiple pairs of trousers from the same brand, as is often the case, this can be a great a solution. Instead of having to through out three pairs of pants, you can use one to extend the life of the other two. Since you will only need a little bit of fabric for each alteration typically an inch or two from the leg opening, you can keep mending and replenishing your other two trousers for a very long time. If you are a fully grown adult you are unlikely to grow taller. The bottom hem will however wear out from rubbing on the shoe. This lets you continually renew the hem. If the pants are cuffed, concerting the cuff to a hem can be another way to access extra fabric in order to mend them. Pant cuffs are a bit of a double-edged sword. One hand the extra weight can accelerate fraying, one the other hand though, it provides you with the requisite textile amount to remedy this. If you want to continue to wear that third pair of pants but still use it as spare fabric you can covert the pants to shorts, keep wearing them albeit as shorts and then keep the excess fabric for future use. It’s best to store the excess fabric in your closet with your other pants so that you can locate it easily when you need it for repairs.

The beauty of having access to the original fabric is that your local tailor or dry cleaner can make the alterations. You don’t need a specialized seamstress or tailor. The tailor will take a narrow strip of fabric and pin it to the inside of the trousers where the fabric is torn. Then using a sewing machine, they will stitch it to the trousers. Because you are using the same cloth, it will be barely noticeable. This is a form of patching. Part of why this qualifies as invisible mending is that apart from using the same fabric, you are placing the reinforcement patch on the inside rather than the outside and so most of the evidence of mending is hidden from view. How you patch a clothing item is a key differentiator between visible and invisible mending. If someone looks very closely, they will be able to observe the stitching however for everyday use this is entirely acceptable and is certainly a far more expedient option that discarding the entire garment and having to pay for a new one. Depending on your sewing skills you could try perform such mending at home. Regardless though, the cost of paying a dry cleaner to conduct such a repair will pale in comparison the cost of buying a new pair of trousers. One inch of fabric should be sufficient. When clothing tears, it does so along a narrow line. The reason you need an inch of width is more so to allow adequate room for the stitching that will bind the spare fabric to the original clothing item. If the tear forms a corner or any sort of shape you will want the patch on the inside and the stitching to follow the shape of the tear.

This is an invisible mending principle you can apply to all sorts of trousers whether chinos, slacks, dress pants, woven or tailored pants. Your first step should be to check the hem of the pants to determine if there is enough fabric to repair them, then drop of the pants at a local tailor and you should rather quickly be able to resume wearing these pants as if they had never been damaged in the first place.

How to fix ripped dress pants