Upcycled Jeans Tutorial

Two weeks ago I cleaned out my son's closet and found 10 pairs of jeans all fairly new, all busted at the knees. He loves to dance and show off his "cool moves" which are half break dance half kung fu. It never fails he busts his jeans at the knees. I was taught growing up that we do not waste anything that could be used by someone else, so it's really hard for me just to throw things away (especially pants that have only been worn a handful of times.) So I stacked all the jeans up on my sewing table and thought about what I would do with them. Then there I was in the grocery store check out line and I picked up People Style magazine only to see pages full of ripped up "Boyfriend" jeans. They are the hot style this season. The light went off in my head, I'll turn my little boys jeans into cute "Boyfriend" style girls jeans. I pulled out my fabric stach and picked out my favorite coordinating fabrics, cut out patches and went to town. I made around 7 pairs, each one different, and even went to the thrift store to see if I could find any other sizes. I found a couple of itty bitty baby jeans and a super cute short sleeve denim jacket. I have a few left to fix up, but I've placed a couple on Etsy already.

Wanna make your own?

Here's a short tutorial.

Materials:
Jeans (new or used)
thread
fabric (2- 3 prints 1/2 yard each)
embroidery thread
Ruler
scissors
sewing machine
Steam a Seam sticky back fusible web
E6000 glue
rhinestones

1. Cut out fabric patches and lay them out on your jeans.
2. Sew patches on inside of jeans to show through knee holes. Use sewing machine zigzag stitch if pant legs fit on sewing machine. Or hand sew knee patches.
3. Cut sticky back webbing to match your patches.
4. Iron on patches to jeans.
5. Hand sew decorative stitches around patches using embroidery thread.
6. Use E6000 glue to add rhinestones.
7. Cut 2 rectangles at least 10" wide and however long the leg opening of you pant is. (example the jeans shown were 10" x 14")
8. Fold in half so that both 10" ends match and sew seam.
9. Now fold band in half.
10. Turn pants inside out and pin band to pant hem.
11. Sew band to pants.
12. Turn right side out, and fold up cuff.

Now your little girl (or you) will have some super cute OOAK jeans. I'd love to see your creations, send them to me or comment with a link to your site.

Hello

To any readers I met at Funky Finds Spring Fling yesterday.

New Spring Design

I finally got around to printing out a couple of new designs with my Yudu machine. This mermaid is one that I've wanted to do for a long time. It's so perfect for the warm beach weather, I couldn't help print one for myself. I still have a few designs to photograph and others to print. I absolutely love my Yudu machine.

I'm on Twitter

I just signed up on Twitter last night. Still trying to figure it out. Follow me if you'd like to get info on new products, sales and other promotions going on in my shops. www.twitter.com/xyfactory

Etsy Dallas Exposed

Check out the awesome Etsy Dallas Exposed treasury, you might even catch a subliminal message hidden within the pictures. http://www.etsy.com/treasury_list.php?room_id=53563

Say Hello to My Little Friend...

We got a new pet today, his name is Frankie and he is a guinea pig. I know he isn't craft related but he's just so darn cute (so is my hubby holding him). Hope your having a great weekend. I have some cute new items to post, but I need to finish all the little details first. So while I do that check out my new little friend Frankie.

Funky Finds Spring Fling

Etsy Dallas will be there, come check out the local talent.

Woo Hoo!

1,000 people have visited my blog. It might not sound a lot to more seasoned bloggers, but it's huge for me! I will have to celebrate some how. Maybe a give away of some sort. Check back to see!

Art for a Cause

We've all see the stories about people seeing Elvis on a piece of toast, now you can put your artwork, or photos onto a piece of toast and help feed the hungry. The Bread Art Project is asking for your help to feed America's hungry. The Grain Food Foundation will donate $1 for every piece of bread art submitted. It is so easy to create your own work of art to submit, all you have to do is go to http://www.breadartproject.com and upload your artwork onto a slice of toast. This is such a fun thing to do, you get a cool piece of art, and America gets feed :) So stop reading now, and head over to create your own Bread Art.

Easter is almost here

I love Easter, the colors, the bunnies I can't wait. I found some awesome Easter art on Etsy. Later this week I'll put up a short tutorial on how to make Confetti Eggs aka Cascarones.

Etsy Buy Handmade TheSupplyCloset

Spotlight

Martha of estudiomartita featured one of my sparkly senoritas on her pin up parade spotlight http://www.byhand.me/component/option,com_content/Itemid,70/id,6064/task,view/ . I just wanted to say thank you to Martha for including me, and I would like to add that Martha's work is beautiful. She makes some amazing handbags, and jewelry. Have a crafty weekend!

Sweetheart Shrines

I've admired the art of shrine making for a while now. I had never really tried my hand at it until recently. Shrine making is so much fun, there are so many ways to make them. I used some small shadow boxes to start out with. I sat at me table covered in pin up print outs, paint, sequins, glitter pens and flowers. I wasn't sure where I was going with everything spread out. Then I grabbed a pin up and started to glitter her. I put her on top of a piece of glitter card stock, but it was just too plain. So I drew on the glitter paper with glitter pens.... oh on glitter overload! Then they started to come together. I knew what I wanted to make, and I went full force, 5 shrines at once! I was cutting, glittering, and gluing all over the place. When it was all over these are what I ended up with. I think they came out cute, I'm addicted now. I have a few black boxes left that I need to fix up. My next project is a stack of plain brown frames. I have an idea, but you'll just have to wait and see what I come up with.

Sparkle Magnets

I finally had a chance to finish up some of my Spring Break projects and get photos taken of them. I need to take better pictures, but these are okay for now. I had a bunch of small wooden crosses, wings, and heart as well as bags full of sequins. I've also found a new love of glitter glue pens. I can't help the urge to glitter anything in sight. The heart magnets didn't come out the greatest, but they are pretty cute. I found the Virgin Mary and Jesus images on Etsy in Passion Fruits shop. The images are great quality, I was able to blow up the ones I really liked and not lose any pixels.

Tomorrow I'll put up some pictures of the Sweetheart Shrines that I've been working on.