No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse — the parable of the cloth patch is the first of the two new-wine parables, and both make the same point about incompatibility between the old and the new. Unshrunk cloth sewn onto a pre-washed (and therefore pre-shrunk) garment will shrink when washed, tearing the garment worse than the original hole. You cannot repair the old with the new because the new and the old have different properties. The parable is not about whether the old or the new is better but about their fundamental incompatibility when forced together.

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