Hoodie with worn out elbows

My favorite hoodie, from Animal Art Crimes, has been wearing out at the elbows for awhile now (and in a bunch of other places, but the elbows are the biggest issue that made it less comfy and useful to wear.) I told myself in… like, October, ahead of winter, that I was gonna patch it up to wear.

It’s May now. oops.

A fairly large part of the procrastination was just because Joann’s closed and I had no idea where to get fabric. And then I just procrastinated more, and then winter was over. Anyways, I ended up at Michael’s for fabric. Their selection is pretty bad to be honest—originally I was thinking of going for a nice black and yellow/gold flannel to match the artwork and bleached fabric, but they only had black and red flannels. I decided against leather or suede since I wanted it to be machine washable still, so from the slim pickings I ended up with a plain black duck canvas that should contrast well against the gray sleeves. Plus, the durability of the canvas should be nice on the elbows.

I drew a rectangle big enough to cover the patch but still leave about an inch of margin on the sides, and then used a cup to trace curves onto it for a rounded rectangle. Since the canvas frayed at the edges, I had to actually do things properly and sew two pieces together then turn them to have a nice finished edge. Forgot about seam allowance when making my pattern though, so they ended up a bit smaller than planned. I stitched the pieces together by hand since I didn’t trust myself doing curves on a machine. Also I apparently don’t own an iron, so closing it up with a ladder stitch sucked ass.

finished patches

You can definitely see the portion that was closed up with the ladder stitch vs the portions that are backstitched and turned out lol. But overall, I’m reasonably happy with how they turned out, considering how rusty I am too.

Anyways, for affixing the patches I also picked up a denim thread in tan/gold from Michael’s for a nice contrasting color on the patch. Honestly, I grabbed the only gold option available (they only had like a half dozen denim threads on the shelf in the first place) but that color turned out to match perfectly. Did a blanket stitch to affix the patches and show off the thread color, and while it’s a bit messy there’s a charm to the slightly wonky mending, I think.

patched hoodie

At least, that’s what I’ll be telling myself anyways.