Upcycled jeans become denim dress

Whoosh! Summer raced by, with renovations on our house, and helping out on renovations at our daughter and son-in-law’s house and weaving, weaving, weaving, weaving, weaving!

I’ve been working HARD on new books and am hunkering in and am  ~FINALLY~ getting them closer to completion and  releasing- oh my!

I took a little break from my looms the other evening to indulge in a little bit of upcycling.

My daughter in law gave me some of her torn blue jeans a few months ago.

Suddenly, the other evening, I felt the urge to take the scissors to them:

copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

I have a couple of dress patterns that I am besotted with these days, and find myself making them over and over in various configurations.

In my previous blog post, (link to post) I showed how I used my fave dress pattern with fabric that I had woven on various narrow looms.

Snipping up the bluejeans to fit the pattern pieces was a touch tricky, and forced me to bend a few ‘good seamstressing’ rules, but what the heck, why not?

copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

I am fanatical about pinning the living daylights out of the sections of garments when I am stitching them together, but I don’t pin my pattern pieces to the fabric when cutting out.

I like my rock collection that I have gathered up over the years. 🙂 They hold things in place without damaging the pattern tissues.

And, of course, I HAD to save and re-use the bum pockets!

I also saved a little pocket from the inside of one pair for a cellphone or glasses mini-pocket, too.

copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

Unfortunately, when I picked the pockets off the backside of the jeans, there were 2 dark blue pocket shapes. Drat!

I thought about attempting to bleach them out, but then thought: Ah, why not consider them to be ‘design elements’? 😀

I am tickled pink with my upcycled denim dress, and am so happy that a couple of pairs of torn jeans have come back to life as a fun and comfy tunic that I am going to enjoy enormously! Whee!

copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

I really should show you the dress that I made from a garage sale tablecloth… it’s great! I wove the neckband…. okay… must take pictures and get back into the habit of blogging again!

And, by the way…. Happy September!