How to fix ripped jeans

I did promise a tutorial, didn't I? Sorry it took so long, my brother came home from spending one year in England on monday, I'm still working in that internship that just takes a lot of my time and I am actually writing this from my (more or less) broken laptop where the space-key gets stuck every 50th word or so and that I hooked up to a monitor since the laptop's monitor is broken.
In any case, before going out and buying three new pairs of pants (gotta love going shoppig with my mom) on friday, I had to fix the one pair I own that I didn't leave behind in my apartment when moving into my parent's for the summer.

I put my hand behind the hole to show you where it is

 I don't know where you usually rip your jeans (if you do so at all) but mine always rip between the legs, because I mostly use my bike to get around and that's where the friction is. On the one hand, it's a nice spot because you don't have to be too neat with your patchwork because nobody's gonna see it anyway, on the other hand it's a spot that's just a pain to reach with a sewing machine. But practice makes perfect, and after doing this for about 20 times I think I found a fairly effective way of dealing with holes in my jeans.

As you can see from the patches, I've fixed these before

Turn your pants inside out and look for the rips (two in my case). Cut out rectangles of fabric (some old jeans you can cut to pieces come in handy) that will cover the entire slit and the surrounding area.

Pin them on where you need them. This might take several tries, but be patient, it'll be much neater in the end if you don't rush this point.

Sew along the edges using a zig-zag-stitch for strength. Don't worry when you have to sew over old patches, a sewing machine can take more than two layers of denim without problems.

The patches from the inside...

You can stop at this point if you feel like it, if you used a matching coloured thread your patch will be pretty much invisible. But if the hole stems from friction, the upper threads will just wear away more until you're back to one layer (the patch) and have to worry about wearing that away as well, so unless the hole you're fixing is at your knee, there are a couple more steps to take. 

...and from the outside.

You can see where I fixed a previous hole because I didn't have any matching thread, but spotting the stitch lines from the other two patches is a little harder, don't you think?
Turn your pants right sides out, let's stabilize these b****es!

 Using a large zig-zag stitch or something like that (just make sure it covers a lot of space, I've done stabilizing using different embroidery patterns on my mother's sewing machine when I felt like it, but you can also just sew back and forth in a straight stitch if that works better for you, just as long as you do it perpendicularly to the slit) i sewed over the rip a couple of times, virtually fixing the threads to the patch with a lot of tiny stitches and thus stabilizing the whole thing.

 On the right are the finished patches as seen from the inside, so you can see the stabilizing stitches a little better. The patch in the middle has them as well, only done in a lighter coloured thread.

I've been fixing my jeans like that ever since I started sewing, and I'm proud to say that because of patches, I can still wear jeans I bought at the age of fifteen. And in case any of you were wondering: it doesn't chafe since we made the patches out of denim fabric. It helps saving money because you don't have to buy new pants everytime the old ones rip, and it saves me from having to throw away my favorite pair of jeans already. I hope you enjoyed this little tutorial and it helps you save either your favourite clothes or your wallet (or both) :)