Upcycling old jeans

With the season changing I’ll have to do some major shopping for the kids as many of their clothes are too small. This growth spurt is not doing much for my limited budget at the moment so I’ve decided to upcycle some of their old clothes (that still fits) and add some pizazz starting with this faded jeans. It is one of the pants that fits Littlest K perfectly. This particular pant along with some others are faded at the knees. For some or other reason she’s yet to move on from the crawling phase. Can you imagine at 6 years old!

It was one of the easier projects I’ve attempted and took me all of 10 minutes to freestyle as I had no real plan or design.

The steps as follows:

Wash and dry clothing item. It’s a great idea to lightly iron the garment so that you have a good canvas to work on.

Old Pair of Jeans

My choice of fabric paint is Dala’s Fabric liner. The cost of these range from about R13. At least that’s the price I last paid at Write Shoppe Kuilsriver. Next to Bargain Books Zevenwacht Mall that is my favourite store. The service at both stores is always excellent. I always find everything craftsy from The Write Shoppe and Amanda (who also happens to be the owner) is super friendly and always gives me great tips. Like the time I couldn’t find fabric dye and she advised me to use fabric paint and dilute it with water and dunk clothing item in the bucket. Worked like a charm.

Fabric Art Liner

Next I started with my painting/lining. I’m no artist as you’ll see by my crooked line.

Start “Lining”

I had no idea what I wanted to do but ended up making (or at least attempting) snowflakes. Littlest K watches too much tv and is quite enamoured by snow. She’s also Americanized and pronounces words with the American twang. Thank goodness she’s over the British accent she adopted when CBeebies was still her choice of programming. Since it never snows in South Africa, except for the mountains, it’s my dream to one day take her to a country where it snows so we can build a snow man. *autopilot has just turned on and I’m singing* “Do you wanna build a snowman…” Dammit Frozen, I’m blogging here! *continues singing* “We used to be best buddies…”

My poor attempt at a snowflake

After the snowflakes, I attempted to make some Gr. R inspired patterns on the faded knee area because that’s what I actually wanted to get rid of. All the ‘art’ was done free hand (but I’m guessing you can see that) and this is the end product. Based on the looks of it I’m guessing that’s the reason why my 6yo thinks I know nothing because I can’t even draw.

The end product

I must warn you that it takes up to 72 hours for the paint to dry. Once completely dry, iron on the reverse side and handwash. Yes handwashing is tedious but hey if you’ve committed to a project like this then you should be prepared to see it through with all the steps.

With my blobs I waited for 96 hours just to be sure. Much to Littlest K’s annoyance because she absolutely loves the personalised jeans and can’t wait to wear it. Do I have to tell you that I’m a rad mom right now? Feeling awesome.

In the meantime I have so many updates to clothing to make which includes lengthening some jeans (actually just adding some frills for the cute factor) as well as adding personal touches to other clothes for the heck of it.

Let me know what you think of my creativity…

PS: The mention of my favourite stores is aimed at promoting their service excellence and not paid advertisements.

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