Creative Hit #8

Alter a Pair of Cut-Off Jeans

When I was in high school, my best friend and I were already into altering our clothes. We had cool shorts, albeit, tiny, tiny little short shorts. Shorts I would NOT let my daughter wear, if I'd had one, which, thank god, I did not. I would have killed her by now, I'm sure. Anyway, my friend's shorts were so very cool--she stitched a big butterfly on the butt and added sequins and beads. It was gorgeous, although it sounds sort of not. But it was--if I didn't know how uncomfortable it would be to sit on beads and sequins, I'd do a butterfly on my shorts right now.

OK! Let's get started! This is going to take a while, of course--you know you want to do some funky hand stitching, maybe some beading. Who knows? (Not on the butt, though!) But first of all, you need to get your cut-offs. Cut off a pair of old jeans if you've got them. Wash them to get the edges to fray, and then dry them WITHOUT a softener sheet (capital letters because guess who forgot this part and then had to wash and dry them AGAIN?)

Then you're going to need to mend them if they have holes or frayed places that will tear. It's easier to work with them if they're fairly stable, so I went ahead and mended these. Not my favorite part, so I used cool fabric scraps to make it more fun. Check out the cotton velvet on this one.

I love how it kind of scrunched up like crushed velvet, but cooler.

Remember this video, about free-motion embroidery?

Use that same thing to sew in the patches, only put the fabric in from underneath, rather than laying it on top. Use a regular glue stick to hold the edges in place until you get it stitched--much better than pins, and much better than the fabric glue sticks, which feel exactly the same but dry out in no time. Even before you open them--I opened a brand new one this morning, and it was already dry and shrivelled up.

OK. So here's what we've got so far. Thanks to Moe for his expert help--he won't let me do anything without him. Remember, we use the word "fluffy" rather than saying "hugely, humongously fat."

As you can see, I have several pair to work with. Check back soon--I hope to get some more work done later today.