patching hakama

My wife picked me up a super-fancy Iwata hakama 4 years ago. The knees have thinned, you know, as they do.

The other week I got a small tear in the fabric.

Anybody got any hakama patching tips, tricks, or advice?

Cliff, ask Min the next time you see him, he has two big ole patches on his!

If the tear is really a tear, rather than a hole, I would start by lining up the edges and machine stitching with a zigzag stitch (fairly wide, say 3/4 if 4 is widest, and very short stitches, that is, many stitches per inch but not so short that the fabric won't feed well). Generally 3 parallel lines of zigzag, starting and ending 3/4" from the tear, will be good initial damage control for underneath the patch.
For the patch, select a fabric to closely match the color and weave of the hak. I would cut it so the patch extends 2" from the tear in each direction, and pink or overcast the patch edges. Regardless of the shape of the tear, the patch should be a square, rectangle, or triangle to make sewing it on consistent.
Pin the patch in place and edgestitch it with a straight, short stitch, then topstitch 1/4" from the edgestitching.

If it is an area that is really subject to a lot of wear, you could double patch (matching size patches both inside and outside the hak) AND make the patch large enough to cover the entire worn area rather than just the tear.

I have no idea, but Janet seems to be pretty knowing about these things and I would follow her advice myself. One of my sempai had patches on his hakama for a while and his were square and appeared to be sewn on in a similar fashion as to what was described above. Not sure if his tears were sewn though...