The buttonhole on my husband’s jeans frayed, so it was too large to securely hold the button. I was able to mend the hole, but it wasn’t without trial and error.

When the buttonhole on a pair of my husband’s jeans frayed so much that it could no longer hold the button securely, I offered to give mending them a try. I ran into some snags throughout the process, but I was able to do it.

First, I reinforced the area with a scrap of quilting cotton. I sewed a patch on the front and back of the waistband over the buttonhole. Then, I put in a few rows of running stitches where the frayed hole was since this area really only had the two layers of cotton fabric. 

Next, I popped my buttonhole foot onto my sewing machine and threaded it with heavy duty thread. I set the size of the buttonhole, positioned the waistband under the needle, and pushed the pedal. Fail! The reinforced denim waistband was too thick for my machine to scooch along under the needle. The fabric pretty much remained stationary and all I got was a mess of thread. So, went back to the drawing board. Or should I say that I went running to Google.

I searched how to hand sew a buttonhole. There are plenty of really good tutorials that showed me the way. So, I broke out the pearl cotton thread and a touch of Dritz Fray Check (I dabbed the cut edges of the buttonhole with the Dritz Fray Check to help prevent fraying…and recreating the original problem!).

It worked! My husband has put these jeans back into rotation, which is the whole point, right—to get at least one more wear out of them?