Photos of repaired trousers

Frugal Paragon did a post a while back about fixing the worn inseam of a pair of jeans. Since I am also, to borrow her phrase, not a woman who is plagued with thigh-gap, I am all to familiar with this issue. A few years ago, I decided to try out one of the many tailors to be found all over in Germany.

I think it's just lining material used for the 'patch' - very soft

The problem wasn't just a worn seam, but that the material had actually worn right through. Since it's hard enough to get a pair of trousers to fit me and these were about the only nice, non-work, light trousers I had for the summer, it seemed worth the chance that a professional could do something. And I was amazed at just what is possible when you know what you're doing. Such a simple fix but I'm light years away from ever being able to do it myself. All he does is place a piece of material over the area that needs to be fixed and then sew lots and lots of lines to fix it in place.

You can see where the material is a bit balled but no holes!

And that's it. You can barely see it from the outside. Easy enough with black, I suppose but he really does match up the colours so well, too.

Since then I've had a couple of other pairs of trousers repaired in the same way and nowadays I try to be a bit more pro-active with the whole thing, paying more attention to my clothes in an attempt to get them fixed preemptively where possible. With that in mind, a few months ago I put a pair of black work trousers into a bag, meaning to take them to my lovely local tailor as the material had started to ball on the inside leg and I could see it was wearing though. True to my usual style I then left that bag sitting for a couple of months until my favourite trousers, combat-style very lightweight summer trousers that I bought in Australia when I was there developed a rip. I didn't think they were quite at that stage but they were nearly at the end of a second summer of heavy wearing so fair enough. I am thrilled that I got these trousers done actually, because starting to cycle a bit more means there's even more wear and tear on that part of the legs so having them already reinforced is great.

Here's the second pair - material is a different colour so easier to see but it was the same colour as the trousers on the reverse

And here's the outside - you can see the outline of the 'patch' more on this one, I think because of the lighter colour

I love being able to extend the life of my clothes like this - cheaper than buying new trousers (if I could even find nicely fitting ones) and less waste. It was only a few weeks ago but I'm ashamed to admit I've already forgotten how much I paid for this. It's in or around ten euro per pair of trousers, I think, possibly a bit less. I don't have a problem paying professionals to do a good job though and am very happy to support a family business like this one.