Denim Refashion

Like I said yesterday, I have been working on some fun projects lately--mostly sewing. It all started because I wanted to get better at sewing zippers. When I sew, I usually just alter clothes--I like to buy thrift store clothes and refashion them to my (quirky) taste. I rarely make clothes or put zippers on anything but now that I have room for my sewing stuff (I took over the spare bedroom when Noah moved out), I find that I want to use it more. I watched several YouTube videos for tips about zippers and then made a bunch of small things--mostly bags and pouches--to practice. 

I've been doing a ton of spring cleaning/organizing (even though it's still freezing cold here) and when I was organizing the "craft room", I decided I needed to make a large dent in all of the scraps of denim I have. When I am done with a pair of jeans for whatever reason, I cut them apart and use *every* piece in some way. However, since my weight hasn't gone super drastically up and down for the last couple of years, I haven't had to replace all of my jeans, hahaha. (Notice I said "super" drastically--it's certainly not at the point of being consistent yet.)

All of my denim scraps had been sitting around for a while, so after lots of inspiration from Pinterest, I came up with a couple of ideas to try. And I *love* how they turned out!

The first is a small purse that I started with the intention of making into a fanny pack. And it could be, if I change the strap on it, but I like it as an ordinary crossbody for now. I collected the seams from jeans that I'd cut up and I arranged them in rows.

I wanted to keep the whole purse in shades of light- to medium-blue (no dark denim) and I didn't have enough to do the front and back like that. Instead, I unrolled the hems from the legs, ironed them flat, and used them to piece together a patchwork back to the purse. I added little belt loops on the sides to hold the D-rings (for the strap) and a lining that I thought complimented it. A simple zipper on top. And I didn't want any pockets, inside or out, so that was easy.

It's the perfect size! It fits exactly what I need (including my Kindle, which I like to bring with me to appointments and basically anywhere that I might have a chance to read) without having space for random junk. This is one of my most favorite things I've ever made.

After that, I set to work on the bits and pieces that were literally just small scraps of denim. I wanted to make a large piece of fabric by cutting small squares and piecing them together in a grid (like I did ages ago with my denim quilt). I cut as many 2x2 squares as I could and hoped it would be enough to make a messenger bag. I needed the piece to be roughly 15 inches by 32 inches. I didn't do the math or anything--I just hoped that when I pieced them together, it would be at least that big.

It worked out *perfectly*. I didn't have one single spare square left and the finished measurement was 15.5 by 33 inches. Then I had to decide on what to line it with and I'd had a very large men's dress shirt in with my sewing stuff for a while (once in a while I'll buy clothes from Goodwill for the purpose of sewing later, if I like the fabric). I cut that up to use to for a lining fabric, and decided to leave the pockets on.

Sewing through a million layers of denim is HARD but the end result was worth it. I love this bag! I'm not sure what to do with it, being a messenger bag, but I'll figure it out because I want to use it.

And finally, as far as denim goes, I am putting my denim quilt back together. I took it apart last year with the intention of putting it together differently and then grew bored with working on it so I put it in the back of the closet. This is what it looked like before:

This is what the quilt looked like before

I have all the boring stuff done now (I *hate* cutting fabric) and now I am working on piecing it together. Basically, I just rearranged the squares, cut them smaller and I'm sewing them back together without the frayed edges on top. I had several pieces of denim where I was messing around with embroidery floss, so I cut those into squares too.

And as I'm piecing it back together, it looks like this:

I turned most of the squares to the wrong side for a different look. I want to quilt it rather than tie it when I'm done, but I have no idea how to do that!

I have some other projects as well, but I have to head to Eli's baseball game, so I'll save those for later!