Recycling Jeans

I love to sew, but I don’t love the high cost of fabric and notions. However, I have come to appreciate the horrid, faded, so-badly-out-of-date-it’s-not-even-retro-cool shirt with the 25-cent price tag at my neighbor’s yard sale. What could possibly be so appealing about something so wretched? Why, the cute buttons, of course! You can make pretty quick work of salvaging those buttons that you cannot buy anywhere else for just a quarter. Yard sales and thrift stores are a treasure trove of fabric and notions. You just have to look creatively.

One of my favorite clothes to repurpose is a pair of jeans. Denim is durable, easy to work with, and terribly expensive. Many of my favorite projects don’t need a lot of yardage. Bags and book covers can be pieced together for a fun patchwork design. So, when I retire a pair of jeans it gets repurposed quickly.

For those of you mumbling that you’d rather see your jeans given to the needy, remember, not every pair of jeans you send to a charity should be there. Rips too big to be worth fixing, bad zippers, and unwashable stains are not good candidates for hand-me-downs. In fact, sending garments that belong in the rag bag now burdens the charity with the disposal job. So, why not get some real use out of those old jeans.

By the way, even if I don’t have a pending project, I’ll keep a stack of denim strips on hand. My hubby does construction, and if I didn’t keep his jeans patched, I’d be buying new ones weekly!!

I find it best to strip the jeans of seams, zippers, and buttons right away so I always have the raw fabric ready when inspiration strikes!

I do tend to wear my jeans until they're falling apart, but I can still get a lot of fabric out of them. Notice the big rip in the backside of these. What you can't see are the thread bare areas that make these jeans not worth patching. Time to cutaway the areas I don't use.

Every once in a while I'll make something that I want to keep certain details from the original jeans. Most of the time I don't want the bulkiness of all that excess. So, I cut away that bulk, starting with the inseam.

Cut the seams all the up to the waistband, then cut away the waistband and zipper. Follow the seam all the way up the leg, around the waits and back down the other side. If the back pockets still look nice, be sure to save them. They can come in handy!

When you open up the pant legs, you'll notice you still have a seam, a hem, and a couple of front pockets to deal with. Simply cut them away staying very close to the original stitching to get the most out of your fabric.

What you have left is 4 nice sized pieces of denim trimmed of all seams and zippers that can be used for a var iety of craft projects.

What do I do with them? Well, here are some pictures of my favorite projects. My daughter made the smaller purse. The large bag is lined because I made it for my laptop. The Bible cover, though, is my favorite! Don't you just love the pocket on the cover and the bandanna lining? I can keep my cell phone, a couple of pens, and a few index cards in the pocket, so I'm always ready to take notes! The splatter project is Colleen's creation. She' ll be using it to carry her dance gear, schoolwork, and lunch on Tuesdays. The whole time she worked on this project, the girl complained that I did "this" to her. I, of course, feigned innocence and blamed some freakish chromosome of her father's.

Thank you for stopping by!What have you recycled or re-purposed today??

Grace and peace be yours in abundance,

Betty