Ever had your kid slide a little too hard into first base and rip a hole in the knee of their baseball pants?
Well, I have.
Honestly, I couldn’t really find any resources online to help me fix the pants, and I really didn’t want to have to buy a new pair. Luckily, I was able to figure out a pretty simple way to patch my son’s baseball pants that has really held up well.
In this short and simple guide I’ll walk you through exactly what I did, what I used, and how well it worked.
Let’s get started.
Patching Baseball Pants – What You Should Know
Ok, so the first thing you should know, is that just about all baseball pants are made of polyester, and for good reason.
First of all, polyester is really stretchy, making it a great material for any sports since you’ll be moving around a ton as you sprint around the field and dive for catches, or in my son’s case, slide into first base.
It’s also really breathable so that you won’t get overheated. Overall, the material is just really easy to work with, holds up well for the most part, and lasts.
However, it is not invulnerable to the occasional tear or rip, which is where a polyester patch comes in. However, before we get to that, make sure you grab whatever baseball pants you are about to repair or patch, and ensure the material is polyester since there could be some other blend that was used.
Ok, now let’s get to what you actually need to do to repair that hole, and there are basically two directions you can go.
- You can use a pre-made polyester overlay patch that you simply iron on.
- You can overlay a polyester patch onto the inside of the pants and machine stitch the two fabrics together.
Either way you go, you’re going to fix up the pants in a workable way, and get your kid (or yourself), will be back on the field in no time.
Alright, enough of the boring stuff, let’s do this!
Step By Step Guide To Patching Baseball Pants
Step 1
Ok, the first thing we need to do is to prep the area. Use a pair of scissors to get rid of any loose strings, irregularities, or anything else that will prevent you from laying the fabric flat. Don’t worry about cutting the hole larger, we’ll handle that in the next step.
Step 2
Alright, the next thing we need to do is to make the tear, or hole, a nice size for our patch. I typically just take my scissors and cut a small bit around the tear so that it is a uniform and even shape. Then, we need to cut our patch.
Start by taking your patching material and cutting out a piece about a 1/2 inch larger than the hole or tear on all sides.
If the patch you’re using is an iron-on one, then you’ll want to be sure that the polyester of the baseball pants you are repairing can withstand the heat of the iron.
What I like to do is to take a little bit of the pants that I cut off when I was making the hole uniform and test it out to see if it will warp at all under the heat of the iron. If not, then using an iron on patch should work just fine.
Step 3
Now it’s time to seal our patch to our baseball uniform pants. Take the pants and lay them face down on your ironing board. Take the patch and put it right over the area you are repairing, making sure that there is plenty of material on all sides.
Set your iron to whatever the recommended settings are on the patch packaging, typically this will be the cotton setting.
Slowly iron in a clockwise motion around the edges of the patch until it is well sealed to the pants.
Place the fabric face-side down and flat so that the damage is reduced as much as possible (visually). Position the patch over the damage and iron the patch on the setting recommended by the patch manufacturer. Usually this is the cotton setting, which is fairly hot. Iron until the fabrics are well sealed together.
And voila, you’re baseball pants are patched and should hold up just fine!
My Experience Patching Baseball Pants
Alright, now let me tell you how this worked for me. I hinted at the beginning that one of my kids had this issue, and I ended up following the exact instructions I listed above.
It took me a little while to figure out what kind of material the pants were, and even longer to find a suitable patch. However, once I found a simple iron-on polyester patch, the repair work itself was actually quite simple.
You could also do this repair with a simple patch-sewing technique, however you’ll want to make sure you use the correct thread.
I personally felt like it was quite a bit easier to accomplish this with a simple patch.
So far, it has held up perfectly, with my son not having any issues. In fact, the patch is hardly even noticeable on his white uniform, so that is great!
If you out this process, be sure to leave a comment and let me know how it goes!
