Patches and the Promise of a Superfluous Hedgehog

YOU ARE NOT TARZAN!!!

Yes, words often heard being bellowed throughout my home.  If not Tarzan, they are pretending to be snakes, horses, dogs, cheetahs.  Pretty much anything that means they are zipping around the house wearing holes in the knees of their pants.  Usual attire consists of stretchy Carters pants (usually around $10 a pair) and something on top.  Usually.

I finally got tired of throwing them out and thought, "you want to be Tarzan?  Then Tarzan is going to get 1970s patches ironed onto his knees."

Strangely, those are not cheap and couldn't bring myself to commit to that level of ugly.  So I took to Etsy.  Custom patches were like $9-$15, so I might as well throw them out and get new pants.

I will not surrender.  I will not give up.

While at JoAnn Fabric buying yarn for another project - another blog altogether - I picked out some print fabric, Fray Check, and Wonder-Under.  Does this confuse you?  Because I didn't do this on my own, I had to have JoAnn (or one of her craft elves who help the craftless) help me.

STEP 1:
First I cut out the prints that I wanted to use.  I am using a canvasy, denimy fabric.  Probably has a name but I don't know those things.  I thought one might have an animal theme and another might be flowers... but more on that later.


Pause to get some wine.  This project needs wine.



STEP 2:
I applied a little Fray Check to the edges to keep the the patches from coming apart at the... edges.  Sorry if I just insulted your intelligence.  It's you not me.  I'm an engineer, not a seamstress dammit.



Pause - a kid got their finger slammed in a door.  Ok.  All good.

STEP 3:
The Wonder-Under is this melty webbing backed by parchment paper that has instruction that I didn't read. For the batch of patches for the animal-themed pants I ironed over a paper bag so that the extra webbing would get fused to the bag.  Worked pretty good.

STEP 4:
I applied the patches to the pants and found that I had a superfluous hedgehog.  Bully for me!  I could see all sorts of placed I could put his cute little self.

I followed STEP 2 - STEP 4 for the flower-themed pair.  I had just finished STEP 3 when I realized I had fused the sticky webbing to the wrong side of the patches.  CRAP!!!  Back to STEP 1.  At this time I realized that there is no such thing as a "superfluous hedgehog."  All hedgehogs have a purpose, a destiny.  His would be live among flowers on some stretchy pants.

STEPS 2-4 followed again without incident. and bam!  We have pants without holes.

Pair #1

Pair #2