Patches, I'm Depending on You Son

Before P left for his roadtrip, he asked me to sew patches on his Pendleton shirt.  He brought the suede pieces to me and I looked down at what seemed to be hundreds of holes.  He loves this shirt but had put a hole through the elbow.  He needed me to do what seemed a daunting task! I figured I could blow it off until right before he returned.   Instead, I ate a quick leftover chickpea salad and crackers and got straight to it.  I put on some music, dusted off my ancient sewing box and was surprised at how settling and tranquil this undertaking felt.  We do so little with our hands anymore, so this was fun and it brought me back.   

When I was a teen, every pair of jeans would need to be hemmed as they didn't make short back then, only longs.  So automatically they'd need taken up at least 6 inches.  We'd put on our platform shoes and use that length as a guide, so if you wore tennis shoes (we used to call them), the wide flares would drag on the ground creating that shaggy fringe.  I would also sew patches on said jeans and jackets to patch actual holes and just to decorate.  This was way before bedazzling existed of course. If you had a date or an impromptu party was announced (which consisted of someone buying a keg of beer while parents were gone), that required dressing up in the 1970's Midwest.  So a trip to the local hippie shop for the blouse and and a quick run through the mall for the jeans was in order.  The sew-job would be very haphazard and sloppy.   You could see light thread every inch or so and if you didn't have time to iron, the bottom would be janky.  But that's how it was done back then.  

This was 1980, where the official jean of any decent house party became the LEVI's 501 Original fit.