Mending small holes in clothing

Dear users, dear authors,
If a piece of clothing has a small hole—for example, because it got caught on a zipper—how can you mend it?
Is it worth the effort to mend it?
Does this work for knitted, crocheted, and sewn items?

With sewn items, it really depends on where the small hole is. I often embroider over it with a small design. With other items, you have to consider how big the hole is and how old the garment is—often it’s not worth the effort anymore, but with some items it still is.

Best regards, Inge

For kids’ clothes, I just put a cute patch on it and that’s that :) For adult clothes, I either use something similar (it doesn’t have to be an animal motif) or decide based on the location and size of the hole.

If it’s no longer worth the effort, the garment goes into my fabric scrap stash and gets turned into kids’ pants or something like that :)

With crocheted items, you can often save the piece by working individual stitches in between to somehow “close” it up again. But how exactly you do that depends entirely on the hole itself.

With jeans, there’s no need to patch them anymore—holes are back in style (or still are).
With shirts, I occasionally get tiny holes, but they’re usually right in the center of the front, so it’s hard to cover them up neatly or discreetly. Then they’re good for a little while longer as housework shirts (since I don’t wear smocks or aprons), and then that’s it.

I also sell crocheted appliqués. It’s happened quite often that people have bought them in specific colors or sizes to cover up holes in children’s clothing.

I just thought that maybe more people than usual are interested in this kind of topic right now, so I’m bumping this post back up. Maybe you’d like to add something.