"Car Pants"

Years and years ago, back when Farm & Ranch Living magazine was a thing (Is it still a thing?) Anyway, years ago I remember reading one of the 'week in a life' journals in Farm & Ranch Living about a young family with four or five little boys. I don't remember much about the family or where they lived or what they did. I do remember they had the cutest built in bunk beds in their upstairs bedrooms, but mostly I remember their pants patches.

As you can imagine, a mother of boys living on a farm would see lots of pants with holes. Well, this particular mother had a very creative method for patching pants. Instead of your usual squares, she patched them by cutting out shapes of animals from iron on patches and sewing them over the holes.

I'm not sure why that idea stuck in my mind? I think it was the fact that she turned a dreaded task into something a little more fun simply by using a little creativity. Instead of old, ugly looking patches, she now had cute, whimsical ones that delighted her little boys. I remembered all this the other day when I was sewing car patches.

You see, when Isaac was little, I took the memory of that creative mother, gave it my own twist, and used car patches to patch his pants. I still do it with Charles and both of them have always been delighted to wear what Charles calls "car pants". I thought you might like to see the process.

Charles' poor pants were in sad need of repair, so I decided to tackle them all at once.

I got out my iron on patches and my little car patterns that I free handed once upon a time. Since the point is the cute patch, it doesn't really matter if the color matches the pants perfectly.

Next, I traced three cars -

two big and one small,

according to the size of the holes. 

I cut them out...

And ironed them over the holes.

I've tried leaving it at that, 

but they tend to come loose in a hurry. 

So, last but not least,

I hand stitch around them

with an applique stitch. I've also

used a zig zag stitch and 

done it on the sewing machine. 

And there you have it!

Charles wasn't at home when I sewed these patches. I purposely laid them out so he would see them and I wish you could have seen his face -- "Mom! Three pairs of car pants!!"

Patched pants were never so fun ☺