Leggings needs mending in the crotch?

Here at Ealing Repair Cafe we do a lot of mending for leggings, sometimes on the knee or at the seams, leggings keep us busy with patching and sewing.

One problem area for leggings is holes in crotch area and an easy solution is to add a gusset.

If you add an extra small diamond shaped material to this area, it puts the area under less strain and less likely to rip again.

Thanks to The Sewing Garden for her inspiration with this great explanation on how to add a gusset to trousers or leggings. For full blog: https://thesewinggarden.com/tag/how-to-put-gussets-in-the-crotch-area/

I find material with a slight stretch good to do this mend such as an old t-shirt or other leggings that have gone past their best. I try to get fabric that will blend with the leggings material.

Cut a piece of fabric into a diamond shape.
Trim material around tear so it makes a diamond shaped hole, smaller than your new diamond shape.
Pin, use a stick glue or tack stitch to position diamond fabric in place to inside of leggings.
Using either an embroidery hoop to keep shape, or the leggings can be laid out flat, being careful to not flatten out the fabric so you don’t sew through two bits.
Stitch in place, with a simple running stitch around the edge of the new material and sew to leggings, using for the thread either:
- Any sewing thread doubled up, to give further strength to the mend. Use two strands together
- Embroidery thread comes with 6 threads, so divide into either 2 or 3 threads, depending on the thickness of the material.
- A strong thread such as these star threads. This type of thread also comes in large sewing sets on star bobbins or other thread manufacturers has bobbins of extra strong thread.

Reinforce the mend by adding more running stitch across the two materials to secure the patch in place and the leggings are ready to go. I have done this with my daughter’s leggings a few times now. These leggings were hardly worn elsewhere, but crotch ripped open so adding a gusset as suggested here.