My friend got these PBJs a little over 4 years ago. He said he hasn't worn them in about a year because they were too beat.
There are tons of small holes all over the jeans but the crotch was completely destroyed. I ended up removing about 15 patches he had added over the years and starting from scratch.
Close-up on the front of the jeans where a lot of the action is. How he managed to get such a big hole on the right thigh is a mystery to me. One of the most time-consuming fixes was the pockets which were torn to shreds. I used some scrap selvedge from a pair of pre-washed Raleighs here, which is one of my new favorite ways to fix a fraying pocket.
Here you can get a better view of the crotch which is just a mess. I did all of these repairs by hand because I'm completely self taught and never owned a sewing machine, and this was sort of a nightmare. I wrapped the rise with some scrap denim and added a lot of reinforcing stitching where it meets the inseam before adding the patches. I had probably half a dozen needles break trying to push through the points where 6+ layers of fabric were stacked up on each other. Other things of note here are: some embroidery I did with sashiko guides on the yoke, which didn't come out perfect but will hopefully help distribute some stress on that area. A new back belt loop because the previous one here was just gone, symmetrical patches under the back pockets which managed to fray in the exact same way.
Detail of a few small bits. At a certain point I kind of didn't know how to stop patching. Everywhere I looked there were frays and holes, and a few were definitely unnecessary. I really enjoyed doing these small, intricate embroidered patches though. When these jeans are invariably destroyed again I'll probably do more of these as I'll hopefully be a lot better at sewing at that point.
Detail on the left knee rip. Normally I remove any fray from the hole I'm fixing but he wanted me to keep as much of it as possible and i think it adds a lot of character. All non-denim fabric in these is from Purl Soho.
Left knee rip used a big piece of Iron Heart 17oz denim that I got from Jean Shop. One of the guys there liked some repairs I did on my Momotaro 10th Anniversaries, so he gave me some denim from a hem they did earlier. Kinda cool to continue the cycle with that.
Detail on the back-left pocket.
Many thanks to Edan (
@mcdeeda) for letting us share this amazing repair job on a pair of 4 year-old PBJs!
