With my wife's help, I finally got one of my three pairs of jeans repaired! I've wanted to fix the worn out upper thighs for quite some time.
I took some notes on how much space I needed to reinforce and drew a paper pattern. I found some gray denim that isn't too too different from the original fabric. However, my jeans have stretch and the gray denim I found doesn't. To get around this, I cut the denim on the bias to give it some stretch when pulled vertically and horizontally, the types of strain it would endure as a patch.
After that, I removed any pilling and cut out the most damaged parts of the fabric. Then I basted the patches in place and freehand sketched some tree bark patterns. I embroidered them with three strands of blue-green-yellow variegated cotton floss. My wife did a few rows when she had some time, as well.
I ended up needing to reinforce some of the work but I'm still very happy with it. You can't really see it too well when I'm standing, but it's visible enough when I sit or kneel or what have you.
I'm going to do this to my other pairs, as well. One of them is too damaged to wear and the other is newer but actively wearing out, as well. On these next attempts, I'm going to secure the patches to the existing seam so it doesn't pop out from the hole.
