More mending

I encountered a bit of a problem when I was about to rehem a pair of linen trousers the other day - the fold had worn and there was now a slit along it.  The big question, of course, was whether or not they warranted being repaired now.  Well, as they were in pretty good condition otherwise, I thought I'd give it a go.  However, I wasn't sure how to go about it.

Thanks to Google, I found a solution.  I unpicked the whole hem on both legs and pressed them.  I then cut a piece of coordinating fabric to cover the hole.  I used a scrap of bias binding I had that I ironed flat.  This was then pinned to the wrong side of the trousers and carefully stitched into place, following the edges of the hole closely (but not so closely that I stitched through the loose threads).

This is what it now looks like:


Next was rehemming.  I turned the trousers inside out and turned the hem up so that the patched hole would be just out of sight from the outside.  In effect, I was shortening the trousers, but only by a a few millimetres. Once I was happy that the hem was even, I pressed it and repeated the process on the other leg (using the first leg's hem measurement as a guide).  They were now ready to stitch back into place.

Et voila!  Almost like new again.