Make Do and Mend - Jeans to Skirt Tutorial

I have a pair of jeans that I love. They always make me feel relaxed when I put them on. They fit well and they are a nice faded blue that can only be accomplished with years of wear. But they are falling apart. I've been wearing them for nearly ten years now and the holes in the crotch are getting so big that I risk showing the world my bits if I wear them in public. But I can't throw them out. They still have so much good wear left in them. For a while they lingered in my rag bag waiting for the perfect project to come and restore them to their former glory. Yesterday, I pulled out the sewing machine and decided that it was time for my jeans to live again.

I thought about patching them, so that I could wear them as jeans again but I didn't have any suitable material for patches and I thought I wasn't very likely to want to wear them out of the house with big patches in the crotch. So I figured I'd transform them into a skirt. I had made skirts out of old jeans in highschool but my approach wasn't very sophisticated. I had just split the inside leg seam and added a triangle of fabric. It worked and I wore those skirts all the time but they had a tendency to pop out in a strange way at the top of the triangle. It was like they had decided that since they couldn't be pants anymore, they would go in exactly the opposite direction of pants. So I came up with an alternative method which resulted in this:

It worked! I got something I can use again from my old jeans. I'm hoping I'll get at least a few more years wear out of this!

For anyone interested in recreating my results, I've put together a little tutorial.

Materials

Pair of jeans (they can be very worn but they should fit well and shouldn't have tears on the waistband area)
Scissors
Sewing Machine
Thread (I used a gold coloured thread to match the existing stitching on the jeans, but any colour will do)
Seam ripper or small, sharp scissors
Ruler or measuring tape
Tailor's chalk or pen or pencil
Pins (I didn't use them, but I'm a cheater)

Directions

Cut or rip open the inside leg seam of the jeans. If the seams are thick, you may need to cut off the seam so that only one layer of fabric remains.











Using a seam ripper, or small scissors, rip off the pockets from the back of the jeans. I only ripped them halfway off and left them hanging there, but this is optional.

Using a ruler or measuring tape, mark a line parallel to the waistband, about 5 cm below it. The line should run from about where the middle of each pocket was or about 20 - 25 cm long, with the crotch seam in the middle.

Cut off the cuffs of the jeans, taking off all ragged edges. Measure from the marked line to the cut off bottom of the jeans. mark the halfway point and cut here. If your jeans are worn through at the knee (mine weren't), you may need to cut out this portion of the leg that is worn. Make sure that the distance from the marked line to where you cut, is the same length as the lower leg portion of the jeans.

Mark from the line you made to the inside corners of the bottom of the skirt. Cut through the top layer only.










Draw a line of the same length that you marked between the pockets on the back of the skirt, parallel to the waistband about 2 cm below the zipper. Mark as you did for back of the skirt. Cut.









Here is where my drawing skills failed me, so you'll have to bear with me from here on in. Take one of the lower legs, open it and pin the shortest side to the top of the rectangle you cut out of the back of the jeans, matching seams, right sides together. Pin out to the corners of the rectangle, then pin the long sides of the lower pant leg to the long sides of the rectangle. You may need to clip the corners of the rectangle to do this. Do not worry if you have extra fabric in the corners of the rectangle. Sew. Turn to right side and press. Remove excess fabric from seam and edge stitch so that the seam lies flat. Do the same to the front. You will have excess fabric at the hem of the skirt as the rectangle cut out from the front is smaller. Apply pockets to the back. Using a zig zag stitch (or a serger if you have one), stitch the hem at the width of the presser foot. Turn up 1cm at the hem and seam using a regular stitch. Press and model!