Repair a torn belt loop

I tend to wear a good pair of jeans to death, and a common failure point is that a belt loop comes off. Generally this is not due to the stitching coming out, as many tears are. On belt loops, what usually happens is that the fabric of the pants fails at the point where the loop is attached, and rips a hole. This is, however, mendable with very little effort, in ten minutes or so.

Step 1: Reinforce the pants

Get a small piece of sturdy woven fabric and cut a backing piece. This should be about an inch or an inch & a half on each side, and cut diagonally, so that the edges will not ravel.

Pin this to the back of your pants, over the area where the hole is.

Using thread that matches the pants (or highly contrasting thread if you prefer), stitch around the hole, avoiding the pins, then back and forth across the torn area. Use the sewing machine's reverse function, angling the line slightly each pass, so that each line of stitching is a millimeter or two apart. When you've done one direction, turn the pants 90 degrees and do a second pass. You should end up with some stitching that looks like cross-hatching, and the hole will hardly be visible any more. The last pictures show this but they are sadly blurry (my apologies).

Comments

[JeanEClip]

I'm with you, I wear my favorite Jeans until they come apart, too.  I'm not very good at sewing and my wife doesn't have the time, so I came up with a clip-on belt loop for jeans.   There is some tooling cost involved to make these, but if there is enough interest I'd be willing to put up some money and make these for anyone who wants one. I'd like to know what you think.

[soundmotor]

I am old enough to recall when a set of Levis would last for years and not have the belt loops rip out or develop holes over the the top inside corners of the pockets. The fabric was tougher and resisted this kid of wear. (The only ones I've found that don't do this are Carhart and this isn't a plug, just the way it is.) It seems now though around wash #25 you need to be very conscious of pulling up your jeans by the belt loops or....."Surprise!", failure that your repair addresses. Sometimes they don't even last that long! Nice instructable and one I've got use for on 3 pairs unfortunately.

[masterochicken]

Luckily I was born without the instinct to pull on my belt loops. Though evey pair of jeans I own (my lucky jeans being the only exception) are patched to hell for other reasons.

[Chefboy6382]

Cool. you forgot one minor detail. use a havy duty or denim needle...

[mrmath]

What about using iron on patches on the inside instead of stitching it all up like that?

[rachel]

You could do that; I haven't worked too much with iron-on things because (or maybe, therefore) I don't trust the glue so much - I'd figure it would come out and pull the whole patch through the original hole. The thing about stitching back & forth is that you do a little bit of replacing the weave that was lost. Also it would be much stiffer. But if those things don't bother you, I see no reason not to use an iron-on patch.