And something for me

I have a lot of jeans.

A LOT of jeans.

And being a big fatty boomba, it means that an embarrassing number of my jeans are worn through at the thighs, but are still perfectly fine everywhere else.

So, being the glorious hoarder I am, I have heaps of jeans I don't wear, but hoard in case I ever find a use for them. Today was that day!

The wonderful world wide web has so many glorious uses for recycled jeans, I particularly liked this one, because it chops off all the nasty thigh rubbage and makes a funky skirt.

I'm pretty lucky to be learning how to sew in the world of youtube and wiki how and King Google. Stuck for inspiration? Pinterest.  Any issues with my machine - Google. Still stuck - Youtube that shit.

Mum was an AWESOME machinist - really fab, but any problems she had she had to nut out by herself, I wonder what amazing capability she would have had if she had the internet?

Anyway, I got picking, and whipped up a skirt. It looked kinda weird once it was put on, because I'd used stretch denim jeans, and it was kinda huggy, so I prettied it up by destroying a skirt I picked up from the bus stop a couple of months ago.

I also needed to pick a bit of a split in the back, so I could walk!

I'm not sure if I'll ever rock this in public, but it's wearable - so I'm counting this as a success too :)

Starting Small

So I thought I'd get straight into it, and make one of These:

I found this on Pinterest, which linked to a fantastic DIY Tutorial.

So I set up the machine and off I went.

Steps:

This was a maternity top I wore when I was expecting Lucy.

 Cut into two large squares - this bigger the better because the fabric really pulls up when the waist band is put on. Hem up any raw edges.

Find the center and cut a circle. I found the easiest was to do this was to fold it in half and trace around a dinner plate.

Put the squares on top of each other, rotating the top one 90 degrees.. I think it's 90 degrees... I never was any good at the whole mathsy thing. Rotate one till it looks like this.

Carefully stitch on the waist band. The tutorial used a wide piece of colored elastic, but I didn't have any. Instead, I cut the arm off an old long sleeved t shirt, stitched it into a pouch and threaded the elastic I already had through. It's all about using what I've got and spending as little as possible! 

Trim it up and put it onto Three year old!

Yup. She didn't like it. Apparently "I only wanted to wear pink today"

Sigh. Still, skirt worked out pretty well!

Lessons learned today:

This is a fabu skirt that was cheap, cheerful and really easy. No major hassles today :)

An overlocker would have been awesome to tidy up the inside seams - I zig zagged them but the light cotton that the original top was made out of was pretty light and frayed pretty easily.

SO - for a first attempt at something completely new from something old, I'm calling this one a success :)