Jeans Refashion: My "New" Jeans

After seeing Yoshimi's recycled jeans, I had refashioning on the brain. After choosing the jeans I wanted to use from the five pairs I had available, I was torn with how to actually put them together. I searched and searched on the internet for more inspiration, made a pinterest board, changed my mind half a dozen times, and wished I had ten times as many jeans to cut up and make some skirts and stuff!

At least I managed to get a pattern made pretty quickly. The detail is in the jeans, the ones I cut up that is, so I just made a slim leg jeans pattern with no pockets, or fly, using lengths of other patterns that I have done for myself in the past. I figured I could probably find existing parts to re-use for these, and if not, it wouldn't be hard to make up new ones!

Going into this, the only definite was that I wanted to use the button down fly from one old pair to go down one of my legs. I wanted it to open towards the back of my leg, so that meant using it on the right leg.

Whew! One decision down, about a hundred to go. Thinking it might be easier to work out what to do if I had bits of fabric to lay out, I proceeded to unpick the seams on my chosen jeans. I opened out the legs on the seams that had no topstitching, and took off the waistbands from the back sections. My idea was to have organic looking bits of jeans joined together with new topstitching, not to join together patchwork style. I didn't want to use any additional fabrics, just what was in the jeans themselves. I had planned on re-using a fly, but wanted more control over the length of the zipper so it fit how I had drafted the front, so went hunting through my vast zipper stash for a new one, and had to find a nice sturdy piece of jeans that would stand up to years more wear and tear.

Only one pair of jeans didn't have a rivet to reinforce the corner of the pockets, so I unpicked a back pocket from that one, firstly to use the piece that now had no pocket, (with a nice dark patch where the pocket was), and secondly to stitch the old pocket on somewhere else.

I tried to do a bit of a plan of my layout one day whilst at my daughter's gymnastics, but found that I couldn't really visualise what I was going to do unless I finished cutting up the jeans and played with the layout using the actual pieces.

I was just about to start sewing them up when I found another pair of jeans that would have been perfect to cut up. As tempting as it was, I didn't think I could go through the agony of re-doing my layout.

So, here's how the layout looked before I started to piece them together

and a few days later when the piecing was done!

I'll let my "new" jeans speak for themselves.

I didn't use much of the dark blue denim, as those jeans were really thin, and very stretchy. I'm hoping it won't affect them in use.

As for all the different jeans being cut at different angles, you may wonder if that affects how they wear. The left leg hangs fine, but the right leg does twist around the leg a bit. Should I have taken my own advice about cutting on the grain? Probably, but I was really hoping that with so many different angles happening that the effects of not being on the grain would cancel each other out.

I think for the width of the foot entry, they could have done with being a little shorter, as they tend to bunch up a little around the ankle. That would be fine (I have made another pair of pants with a similar foot entry that bunches around the ankle too), but because of all the different fabrics, it tends to look like the fit is off. Despite the button fly on the right leg, I think I will make them shorter. After having worn them for a whole day, the left leg in particular is rather uncomfortable around the ankle. I may also add belt loops, as, despite my best efforts, these are still a little loose around the waist, so may need a belt to keep them up!

As for all my other images pinned on pinterest, I do actually have another pair of jeans that have just worn through on one knee. They fit well at the waist too. I'll keep wearing them for the rest of this winter, but I'm thinking as soon as next summer hits, it might be time to turn them into a cute skirt!