Jeans donation

I am so grateful for the generosity of those who donate jeans.  Lance Haggith approached me at Bromham show, offering more jeans.  These turned out to be jeans passed on to him by Trading Standards, having been confiscated by them as imitation designer items.  This is the latest batch, soon to be cutup and recreated.

Despite being imitation, these are very good quality, and brand new - a delight to work with.

How to deconstruct jeans

I thought this might be useful to some.  This is one way in which I deconstruct jeans.
Take one pair of jeans.

 Cut up each leg seam to separate front and back legs.

 Cut the back pockets off and trim to an appropriate size.  I aim to cut to 8" square, but these pockets ended up as 9" square.  I use the pockets to make one of my varieties of pocket bag.

 I trimmed one front pocket to 6" square, though I am not sure as yet what I will use if for.  This is often a problem with front pockets - they are very attractive but often difficult to use.  In this case I loved the buttons, but had to use the seam and the waistband in order to have any chance of using them.  I may manage to turn this into a pocket purse.
 The other front pocket was easier to make use of.  I cut it to size for a mobile phone case.

I cut as much as possible of the legs into 4" strips.  For me, this is the most versatile use.  I can use these for my flower bags, for the top of a pocket backpack, for handles, or piece four different strips together and cut into 4" squares.

 The remainer of the legs was cut into 3" strips.

 The scraps - of a reasonable size - will be used for crazy patchwork, or "found fabric" as I sometimes call it.  I keep bags of scraps and, when I am feeling creative, piece them together to create new pieces of fabric.

So there you have it. One way of deconstructing jeans.

Cutting spree

I spend an evening cutting in the garden and thought you might like to see what 83  pockets look like!

These will be made into pocket bags.  Sadly this pile will only make ten bags.  Fortunately I have been collecting pockets, and have a considerable number more, ready for my forthcoming sewing day at Tudor Rose patchwork when some lovely ladies will be joining me (I hope!) to help me make lots of drawstring backpacks as well as some of the original pocket bags.

Helpers!

As you can imagine, there are some very time consuming parts to the process of making bags from old jeans.  One of these is the process of cutting up the jeans.  I prefer to separate jeans by simply cutting up each leg seam and through the waist band - I find this the most economical way of using the material.  I do change this for combat style jeans and those with interesting embroidery or other features, but this is the "normal" way,  It is, however, very hard on the hands.  I am fortunate to have three groups of people who help me with this.  One is a group of three young ladies from the school where I teach who have offered to help as part of their Year 8 Challenge.  Another is a variety of people from Church who have come along to a Saturday "Cutting Party", and the third is the Church youth group, Legends.  Last week I took an enormous tub, overflowing with pairs of jeans.  I sat and cut (while most of the boys watched the football match which was on!) and most of the girls present, and some of the boys, helped me with the job.  I went home with this:

Thank you Legends - and other helpers - it makes my sewing so much easier to have this help!

Cutting parties and the results

After the success of the cutting party at Legends Youth Club last week, I had another at Church on Saturday.

Five wonderful ladies from Church came along for part of the day to help me cut.  Many of them said how therapeutic they found it.  I ended up with all my jeans cut up, and several sets of bags cut out.
The sun was shining when I got home, and I had the cutting bug by then, so I headed into the garden with my cutting board and fabric.

I stayed out there for the rest of the afternoon, then on Sunday afternoon, and then I spent most of Monday out there as well.  I have the sunburn to prove it - ouch!  I also have this:

(Actually there were two more small plastic boxes and two more plastic wallets which I missed from this photo!).
Each box holds five sets of pieces for a different bag - or sometimes more.  The large blue box at the back holds all the pockets from the various jeans.  These are destined to become backpacks for the children of Casuarina House - all 24 of them, and each one embroidered with the child's name.  Quite a project; I'll keep you informed!

I also have:

Five Daisy bags.

Five Noriko bags.

Five shoulder bags.

Five baby owl bags.
And (not photographed) five makeup bags, numerous phone case pieces, uncounted pocket purses and about 50 pocket pencil case pieces.
Watch out for the finished products - I just know this is going to speed up the process so much!

In other news, plans for the next fortnight include adding floor to ceiling shelves to one wall of my sewing room.  I might even be able to get everything off the floor when that is complete!

I'm sharing this post -just for the heck of it - at these link parties:

Create and Share	Made by Me	We Made it Wednesday
Show off your stuff	Whip it Up Wednesday	A Creative Princess
;
Pretty Shabby	Whatever goes Wednesday