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September 11, 2011 · 9:59 pm

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:

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?

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.

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!

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!

: copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

: copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

: copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

: copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

: copyright Noreen Crone-Findlay

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Filed under eco crafts & green projects

Tagged as creative adaptive reuse, denim dress, dressmaking, new clothes from old, recycle, recycled blue jeans, recycling, sewing, upcycled dress, upcycled tunic, upcycling

June 1, 2010 · 10:31 pm

Video tutorial on how to make tarn or t shirt yarn

I absolutely love working with tarn, which is yarn made by cutting t shirts into a continuous length of fabric strips. You then use the fabric strips as stretchie, wonderful yarn.

Tarn is a terrific way to upcycle, recycle, re-fashion, re-purpose, re-use and reclaim old t shirts that are no longer wearable. Perhaps they are stained or have little holes in them, or the neck has gone all wonky, or they have a logo on them that you just don’t want to wear anymore.

In that case, turning the t shirt into tarn is a fabulous option.

I showed how to make a ‘buttonhole join’ in tarn here:

How to do the buttonhole join link

and in this video, I showed how to weave it on the potholder loom:

Potholder loom weaving with tarn

Normally, I use a swift to hold the t shirt when I cut my tarn. I decided that that wouldn’t be the best choice for making a video, as most people don’t have swifts, so I used a little stepladder to stretch the t shirt.

It’s kind of clunky, so you have to forgive me for the fumbly bits.

Here’s the video on how to cut tarn: LINK

14 Comments

Filed under eco crafts & green projects, tutorial & how to

Tagged as re-fashion, re-purpose, re-use, recycle, reduce, t shirt yarn, t shirts, Tarn, upcycle, video tutorial on how to make tarn