If you’ve been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for more than a few years, you’ve certainly run into wear holes and tears in your gi or gis. I have. It’s pretty much an inevitability. I’m not sure how many gis I’ve owned since I began training in 2008, but I can tell you that each and every one of them has earned its stripes, so to speak.
Wear holes are different than rips or tears. Wear holes generally occur in the knee areas of the pants and elbow areas of the jacket and since most gi pants offer two layers of cotton for the knees, the outer layer is the one to suffer. The wear hole will pretty much end up looking like a hole with a bunch of threads lying one way or the other with a solid piece of material behind. As for the jacket, the wear hole will look like an actual hole. It’s important to fix a jacket wear hole as soon as it appears. It can grow rapidly if left untended to. Pant wear holes can remain for a few rounds, but will need to be sewn quickly too, lest they get worse.
Rips or tears occur along the seam lines of both the pants and jacket. When purchasing a gi, you’ll see advertisements for those with double or triple stitching along the seams. That’s great, but as time passes and as the gi gets washed and worn, the fabric begins to thin. Rips along the edges of the seams, not the seams themselves, are bound to follow. There’s really nothing a person can do about it, besides not wear the thing. And what’s the point in that?
During my early days of training BJJ, I’d experience a rip (usually in the pants) and simply throw the item away. These days, since I’ve learned how to use my sewing machine, I repair the rips. Again, rips generally occur along the seam lines of pants – and as for the jacket, down near the ends of the sleeves. Those sleeve ends wear out quickly because of the grips people attach themselves with. I’ve actually owned a jacket that was nearly torn completely from my body while rolling. I was sparring with an aggressive opponent and the moment he sniffed out the fraying fabric, he pulled and tugged and did everything he could to make things worse. I should have punched him in the face for it, but I would have paid the price if I had done so. He’s got about 80 pounds on me. Needless to say, the jacket didn’t make it out alive. It was too old and thin. I couldn’t have repaired it anyway.
I thought I’d write a quick post that describes some recent repairs I made to a pair of my Tatami gi pants. I don’t sew for beauty because, quite honestly, I don’t know how to. Early on, after learning how to use my sewing machine, I realized that I’m nowhere near expert level, so I’ve resolved to describing my projects as “unaesthetically pleasing, but as strong as iron.” That description works well for me and no one really cares one way or another. They’re my gis, after all.
Essentially, on one pair of pants, I had one tear along a seam on one leg and as for the other leg, a worn out knee, another rip along a seam, and a frayed hole adjacent to two triple-stitched seams that formed a corner. The pants are old and are in pretty terrible shape, but they’re my favorite pair. They’re extraordinarily broken in and I’ll do anything I can to make them last as long as possible.
My repair process goes like this: turn the pants inside-out, cut patches to their appropriate sizes (an inch or two larger on all sides than the hole), and then iron those patch pieces over the offending areas. Once the patches are secured, keeping the pants inside out, sew the patches to the pants by going back and forth in zig-zag formation. The goal is to flat-sew the patches to the pants so they never even think about coming off. The other goal is to make it so if the torn or worn area is ever stretched again, that sewn on patch will prevent any further damage.
As per my description, you can see that you don’t need to be a genius to sew patches to gi pants to make the pants last longer. All you need is a sewing machine and a few minutes to learn how to use it. I’m not under any illusion that my pants will have a long life, but I like to think I saved some money somewhere by not replacing them so soon.
