If one tries to (is in the questionably lucky situation of having to.......) relocate some patch activity from one repo to another repo with sufficiently different directory hierarchy layout, then possibly the best way is to:

• create an interim temp commit to adapt the target repository to the layout required by the git am series

• apply the patch series

• remove the interim temp commit (via interactive rebase), or alternatively specifically revert it (whichever way is more suitable to express proper history requirements)

(thereby staying right within efficient fluid toolchain behaviour, rather than having to fight with "special" error state/situations such as *.rej files)