Mending Mens Clothing: A Hole in the Front Pocket

Welcome to the second installment in my Mending Men's Clothing series.

Today's culpret is the same pair of pants as my last mending post, but this time we're dealing with the right pocket.

This time not only has the leg seam come apart, but the pocket has developed a nice little hole. To note, the last time the seam came apart above the pocket reenforcement. This time it came apart below it.  

This is the inside of the pants. You can see where the pocket lining has worn and come apart from the pocket. The pocket is on the left and has the brown boarder. The side seam of the pants has the serged edges in the upper right corner.

There are a couple of ways to deal with a hole in a pocket. I tried to refer to the 1946 edition of Mending Men's Suits by Clarice Scott and Anne Hagood. Unfortunatly they didn't really have much to say about this particular problem so I totally winged it.

This first step is the same as with the left pocket. You need to remove the stitches holding the pocket to the seam allowance of the side seam of the trousers. In the photo above the side seam has been removed and the two serged edges belong to the front and back pieces of the right leg of the trousers. 

Next trim off the frayed bit of pocket lining. You'll need to rip out a few stitches on either side of the tear to get the cut as straight as possible. 

Afterward you can do one of to do one of two things. You can remove the brown pocket edging, align your pocket pieces, reseam the side of the pocket and then resew the pocket edging around the outside. That would be the right way to do it. 

The wrong and lazy way (i.e. the way I did it) is to fold the newly trimmed pocket under and whip stitch or back stitch it into the pocket seam binding to hide the fact that you didn't take the above steps. (Hey, it was late okay! And I wanted some sleeping time... don't judge me.)

To finish up you just need to resew your side seam. Again it would be better to do this with a machine as far as looks, but this time I hand-stitched. You can be a little less exact when doing repairs on the inside of your trousers, but I do recommend using a back stitch if hand-stitching so it hides better among the machine stitches. Over lap the stitches that have not come apart by about half an inch to keep the seam from coming apart again. 

Complete your repair by reattaching the pocket to the seam allowance of the trousers. 

And you are done, my friend. Congratulations. Press your seam to get it flat and you'll never know that there was a problem.