Like with a lot of projects, the middle of this is going to look a bit messy.  I’m pretty sure if I were doing this right I’d only show you the shiny finished product.  But I always find it refreshing to see that someone else has messy bits in the middle, so I’m leaving them in.

The first step was ripping off the old patch.  I’d put it on there rather firmly, and it has been through the wash dozens of times since I put it on, so this part was actually kind of a pain.  But I wanted to take it off because I was worried the elbow would feel thick and bulky if I didn’t.  So I got my seam ripper and put in the time and it eventually came off.

Next I took out the stitching I’d used to stabilize the hole last time.  I wanted to see the whole thing, with all of the earlier repair work removed.

Once that was done, I took some sock yarn (superwash, with nylon, nice sturdy stuff I trust to go in the wash over and over again) and stabilized the old hole, the new hole I made with the seam ripper slipped while I was removing the patch and the thin spots that had developed since the last time I fixed this.

I didn’t worry about making it pretty, since it’s going to be under the patch.  This is just to make sure the holes don’t get any bigger and make sure I have fabric to work with when I put the patch on.  Don’t worry, it will start to get cuter next time.