How to Sew a Tear in Clothes

by Rembatb

2 Materials

10 Minutes

Easy

A pair of shorts needed to be repaired. A needle, thread, excess fabric, and torn garment is all it is needed for this project.

1. First, I accessed the damage.

Assessing the damage

2. Cut away any excess fabric or threads.

3. Cut a piece of fabric from another source to form a patch. The size of the patch and the shape is determined by the damage but usually just a square patch of fabric will do. In this case I use black felt to match the black shorts.

4. Choose a needle size. I went with small because that was all that was required.

5. Thread the needle with your color choice of thread usually the color should match the item (unless of course you're going for a special hem in which case, you would want the hem to show or stand out such as on a dress or a handkerchief).

6. Place your patch in the position where you are ready to sew it. My patch needed to be inside of the gaping hole much more like a stabilizer than an actual patch in this case, so I placed the felt inside of the gaping hole and from there I began sewing.

7. I used the overhand stitch. The overhand stitch can be used to bring two different pieces of fabric together. In this case I was using it to close the gap.

8. As you can see here I have finished it, using the overhand stitch which left it raised rather than if I had used the backstitch, which would have had a flattened look but would not have served my purpose here.

9. Clean- up. Any threads that are loose I tighten at this point, if I haven't been tightening them as I went along and I don't want to pull it super tight because then the fabric will pucker.

10. Here is where I am finished with my sewing and I make a knot. There there are a few different ways to tie off a knot when ending a sewing project. I use the finishing knot.

Finished!

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