FSIS: Week 4, Old Jeans Makeover Tutorials

Magen — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:51:34 +0000

If you haven’t guessed. I had been meaning to finish the old jeans tutorials for months now. So glad it’s done and available for everyone’s use! If you did’t catch them, here they are:

Part 1 Old jeans Makeover: Dyeing

Part 2 Old Jeans Makeover: Tailoring

Aimee at Crafty Bug also finished something this week…check out these sweet Urban Bonnets!

Join the challenge! Finish something you started and leave me a comment. I’ll show-it off in next week’s post!

Doctors Office Insecurity

Magen — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:37:29 +0000

Please, tell me that you can sympathize with feeling like your at the doctors office with your children constantly. I hate the anxiety of not knowing if you should bring them in or not. It’s seriously emotionally exhausting for me. When I do bring them in, it always seems that I leave feeling one of two things: 1. That I waited way too long to bring them in or 2. That I overreacted and I am a hypochondriac mother. Both are exaggerations and it’s good to recognize them them for what they are, parenting insecurities. The girls pediatrician is awesome and is always good at shooing these thoughts away.

It’s just that I worry like crazy when my kids are sick. A lot of the times their ailments are recognizable and no-brainers. Give me a grumpy little Lime, I can tell you exactly what’s wrong. She needs to poo! I’ll figure out if they are teething, if it’s just the “a-cold”, I know exactly when they are going to spew (I’m seriously amazing at this), or if they are just exhausted or dehydrated. But give me something that’s in the gray area, I’m done for. I hate not knowing what’s wrong because I start imagining meningitis. I HATE that meningitis exists.

Any one with me on this?

Tutorial: Old Jeans Makeover, Part 2-Tailoring

Magen — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:01:40 +0000

I’m all about re-purposing old clothing. Cheap, easy and exciting to see a favorite clothing item find new life!

A few months ago I decided to give a pair of old jeans a face-lift. I loved the fit around the waist and hip, but hated the boot-cut style. The color was also completely washed out…in a bad way, yuck. So here’s the plan: A) Dye them. B) Tailor the fit.

Tailoring your jeans.

What you will need:

Your sewing stuff
Sewing scissors
Yard stick
Tailors chalk, a light pencil or any chalk you can find

This project can be broken down into two main steps, hemming and tapering. I had walked on the ends of my too-long pants for a couple of years, and so for this tutorial I’ll show you how to hem your jeans without keeping the original hem. If you like the length of your pants skip this step.

Hemming

There are a couple of good ways to hem jeans. But I’m going to stick with what I did here because I was not able to save the original hem.

1) Put your pants on with some shoes. Determine where you want you the bottom of your pant leg to fall and place a sewing pin to mark. Now you can take them off!

2) Measure from the bottom edge of your jeans to the pin (A). This measurement is how much length you would like your jeans to be adjusted. I needed about 4 1/2 inches off! Next, measure the length between the bottom edge of the pant to the original hem line stitching for your reference (B). Mine was approximately 3/4 of an inch. To re-create my original hem I’m going to need to double the amount of length of the original hem, so 1 1/2″, so this subtracted from the 4 1/2″ measurement equals how much I’ll be cutting off from my pant bottom (C), 3″.

A – (B x 2) = C

Got that!?

3) Time to cut off the length. To do this, lay your pants on the ground and measure from the bottom of the pant (or approximately where the bottom of the pant line would have been) up your determined amount of length (C) and place a pin. Do this all around the pant leg. You do not need to get too crazy about exactness, just make sure you take measurement from the bottom of the pant and not straight across. Next, take a good pair of sewing scissors and use the pins as a guide to cut around your pant leg making sure you do not cut through the layers but around the pant bottom.

4) If you plan on tapering your pants then you need to skip down to that section now. You will finish the hem after the tapering is complete.

5) Tapering complete? Okay, next we need to finish the hem. With the pants turned inside out, press the edge up 3/4″ (or original hem length, B) and then fold again 3/4″ (B) to hide raw edge. A couple of tips to make the hem look professional and match the original. Match the thread to original, you can find thread that is made for denim in the thread section of your local sewing store. Also, use a universal heavy-duty needle (size 16) and length 3 or 4 stitch. Stitch carefully around the top of the fold making sure you stitch straight and through all layers. I try to start at the inside seam and work my way around. Press.

One more tip, if I am hemming my blue jeans, I will scuff up the bottom and around the hem a little with some fine grit sandpaper. New hem jobs look funny on blue jeans with out a good press and buff!

Taper

Next, we need to fix the boot cut. You will do this from the outside seam of your pant leg. Disclaimer: Professionals would fix a boot cut from both seams for an even taper. I’m lazy…and you can hardly tell the difference…as a matter of fact no one has noticed the difference!

1) Put your jeans on, inside out. Pin the outside seam where you would like them to fit, making sure your pins go back out the fabric so you can wiggle out and not get pricked! Do this all the way down for reference. Take them off.

2) Use a yardstick to approximate the taper line. My taper started just a little above where the knee would be. Draw a straight line with chalk.

3) Make sure your pant leg is lying flat by pining the seam in a couple of places. Now sew from the bottom of the pant up the chalk line and off the edge of the pant. Make sure the overlapping seams (the original and the one you are sewing) run together as smoothly as possible. Next, turn them inside out and try them on. How do they fit? If they fit perfect, great! If you need to take them in more than draw another line and repeat. If they are too tight then take out the stitching and try again.

4) When it feels right, turn the pants inside out again. Lay the tailored leg on top of the other, laying them as flat as possible. Mark the other leg using the first leg as a guide (this is just a shortcut to doing the measuring process again, but could certainly repeat the same process again!) Sew the other leg and make sure the fit works.

5) Once you are happy with the fit of both legs you should cut the excess seam allowance off and re-enforce the seam by stitching up the leg once more or using a zig zag stitch. Last but not least, press out the seam.

Enjoy your hard work!

Did you miss Part 1: Dyeing your old jeans? Here it is!

Tutorial: Old Jeans Makeover, Part 1-Dye

Magen — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:13:27 +0000

I’m all about re-purposing old clothing. It’s cheap, easy and exciting to see a favorite clothing item find new life!

A few months ago I decided to give a pair of old jeans a face-lift. I loved the fit around the waist and hip but hated the boot-cut style. The color was also completely washed out…in a bad way, yuck. So here’s the plan: A) Dye them. B) Tailor the fit.

Dyeing your jeans.

This is fairly straight forward and a lot easier than you probably imagine. For this project I chose a safe black, but depending on the wash of your jeans, I’m sure that any color would work if you left them in long enough. It would be pretty cool to transform your old pair of blue jeans into a hip green or red*. Or you could just play it safe and give them back their deep blue hue.

Keep in mind when choosing your color, that the the threading will most likely remain it’s original color because it is polyester and will not absorb the dye (see above photo). I think in most cases the accent thread color adds a nice touch, but I don’t want you to be caught off guard…make sure you coordinate!

*It is likely that you will not produce deep colors with denium. Think …muted color.

Choosing your dye:

When it comes to brands I have used RIT and Dylon.

RIT: (Found in your local laundry detergent aisle) left the jeans with a little bit of a purple hue…which was okay but in the end I chose to re-dye them. I have also found that RIT fades very easily and is not as permanent as I would like.

DYLON: The second go around I used Dylon brand that I found at Joann’s…it is a blue based black which looks much better.

What you will need:

Fabric Dye
Bucket (or a large bowl)
Medium size bowl for wet jean transportation
Salt
Wooden Spoon
Cleaning gloves
Optional: Apron

First, I’m going to have you read your chosen fabric dye instructions– because we are going to follow them. I am just going to offer you a few tips for a more fool-proof experience:

#1 Wear an apron. Save the clothing your wearing from dye flinging this way and that.

#2 Put on some cleaning gloves. They are taller and heavy duty. I like ‘um.

#3 Use a deep bucket. Don’t bother yourself with possibly staining your sink/tub, or whether a bowl will be large enough to hold it all, OR doing this in your washer!? Just find yourself a bucket. (I bought my bucket at True Value for $5 and set it aside exclusively for dyeing stuff!)

For the whole process I kept mine on the front porch away from a bizilion possible children diasasters, and also because I found it particularly awesome to come out of our apartment wearing full-on dyeing garb and gloves up to my elbows to stir my witches brew every 20 minutes.

Really, you can dye successfully by following the directions on the back of the dye packaging. But here is the basic run down of my process:

1) Add a good amount of hot tap water to the bucket. Dissolve a 1/4 cup of salt in the water and then stir in your powdered dye or liquid dye until it is all disolved/dispersed. Next, add enough hot tap water so that your jeans can be completely emerged in water + have some room to be fondled.

2) Make sure your jeans are clean and thoroughly damp so they can soak up the dye easier. Place them in the bucket and stir for 15 minutes with your gloves on. I usually squeeze them, knead them, turn them, generally squishing them, until I am sure the dye has its way with every inch of the fabric.

3) Now let them sit, and every 20 min or so (set a timer) put your gloves back on and work the fabric again. You can do this for as long as you have the patience. My first time around with this pair of jeans I lasted 5 hours! The second time around only 1 1/2 hours. I’m not convinced the extra time made a huge difference.

4) Carefully dump the whole thing into, preferably, a stainless steel sink to rinse. Make sure you have your gloves on again and work the fabric under cold water until the water is only tinted with color.

5) Throw your dyed jeans into the washer and use a warm wash and a little bit of detergent. I also run them for another cycle with cold water…and then you can air dry them or throw them in the dryer with a no heat/low heat setting.

Done. Fabulous.

Leave me a comment on how it goes!

Now are you ready to tailor them to get the cut you want? Tutorial will be posted soon!

FSIS: Week 3, Bedroom Headboard

Magen — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 15:00:45 +0000

Okay, this was a big accomplishment for me. I meant to finish this project almost a year ago! I was re-decorating our bedroom. No, let me take that back. I was decorating out bedroom for the first time EVER, and decided to make a headboard because I could not fathom settling on a cheap one. I was in-love with button-tufted headboards…but with a very small budget it wasn’t going to happen. It was actually pretty easy to make and cost me less than $100.

So anyways, I didn’t have time to finish it one night and so I hung it in our room to have some where to put it until the next day…mistake!! It never came back off. It only had one button for a year!? Really?

So, I’m relieved it’s done and it looks great….now I need to finish decorating our room.

Finish anything this week? Send me a photo or link and I’ll post it next week!