How to mend pants without knee pads |Keeping it Real

Hello, and welcome. Today I'm going to show you a quick and easy way to mend pants without knee pads.

A bit of background first: I have a boy that tends to come home from school almost every day with his pants torn at the knees. I have no idea if this happens with all boys or just with mine, but over the years I've developed several strategies to deal with it. It's either that or having to new pants every week.

Of course knee pads are the most obvious choice in this case, and the best ones are those that you can iron-on and don't even need to sew (although from my experience they may need to be reinforced after being washed several times). But even if you make your own knee pads instead of buying them, they don't work on every pair on pants.

Point in case: the cargo pants below (I forgot to take a "before" picture, so you have to trust me there was an ugly hole in the left knee) - they are full of pockets and seams and there was no way I could fit a knee pad over those and still make it look ok.

The solution? Cut a piece of fabric large enough to cover the hole but that can fit in between the seams. The only recommendation is that you use a sturdy fabric, because otherwise this will be just a one time fix and the pants will come back with another hole in the same place too soon.

I used a bit of fabric leftover from the Summer Water Bottle Holders and just sewed it over the hole. If you want you can also use fabric glue. Then I added a couple of decorative stitches all around.