I have this pair of old jeans, who doesn’t, that are getting holes in all the wrong places (like the inside thigh for example). I love them litterally to pieces. Seeing as how spring is the time for new life, and these jeans are coming to the end of theirs, I figured it was time to upcycle and give these old jeans a new spring look. (scroll down for a tutorial)

Materials:

1 pair of old jeans (or new if you really want)
1/2yd of woven fabic that coordinates (remember to preshrink)
seam ripper
sewing machine
good scisors
straight pins
thread to match the fabric
thread to match the top stitches of the jeans (it’s more of a specialty thread that’s thick and usually some variation of orangish yellow)
a denim needle for your machine

Preparing the Jeans:
1) first thing you’ll do is figure out where you want your skirt to fall when it’s finished. Put on the jeans, mark where you want the finished skirt to be, then go and inch down and cut straight across each pant leg.

2) Open the crotch seam. With my jeans, the seam at the crotch had a good amount of wear that would make it unsuitable for sewing so instead of ripping the seam with a seam ripper, I opted to cut the seam along with the wear spots.

3) Preparing the front and back seams. You’re going to need to rip out that gorgeous top stitching that give denim it’s official jean look. Take note of how the seam was assembled so that when we go back for reassembly, it will be easier to recreate (in the pants I used the back was a french seam variant and the fron was just topstitched). Find the front seam that runs up to the zipper and rip that from the cut crotch to a little under the zipper. Find the butt seam and rip that out to a bit under the next seam up (see picture).

*note: there are usually a lot of seams here. Up to 4 in most cases. Just take them one at a time making sure you don’t rip the material. Also, surging seems to be easier to rip from the bottom, so rip that out last.*

4) Now we’re gunna pin and trim the crotch. Pants need to have crotch shaping, a skirt does not. In order to adjust for this you will need to lay your pants out flat and decide where you want the fabric panel to start. Pin that together. Then pinch the excess fabric and pin up to where you stopped ripping out the seam. Trim about a half inch away from the pins. Repeat for the other side.

5) the sides. Now we’re going to figure out where the side panels should go. Pick up your pants and fold the waist so that the side seams touch eachother and the zipper is on one side and the back pockets are on the other side. Lay your pants back down flat. Eye where you placed the beginning of the panel for the front and back and place a pin (it’s the yellow one in the picture) at the same level at the side seam. Repeat on other side and make sure the two pins (one on each side) match each other. Measure the distance from bottom of pants to pin and record.

6) Rip back the side seams to 1/2 inch beyond the pin.

The Panels
1) Cutting the Panels. The panels are what give the skirt its flare. Take the measurement you took in step 5 and add an inch. Take that new measurement and cut 2 strips, both that width, from along the short edge of your coordinating fabric (remember to not include the selvage in that measurement).

2) Now there are a couple of ways you can cut your triangles. The way I used was pretty free form. If you need a more precise way, I’ll include that too.

Version 1: What I did was cut a diagonal line starting at the bottom corner. I just eyed the angle. Then I folded the half of the triangle and cut a mirrored angle so the result is that I have an isosolese triangle (two equal sides, two equal angles). Then, to make the second set of triangles (because remember you are working with two layers at a time right now) fold the half triangle again and cut again.

Version 2: If you want something a bit more precise I understand. Decide how long you want the bottoms of your triangles to be and measure and mark that at the bottom of the fabric. Fold the fabric so that the marks are touching and mark the crease on the top of the fabric. From that crease mark, measure out the same distance that your bottom marks and make your last mark. Your first cut will be from the bottom corner (first mark), up to the top mark (the crease mark), and then back down to the next bottom mark (second bottom mark). Your last cut is back up from the second bottom mark to your last mark at the top.

*note: because panels are what give your skirt it’s flare, the longer the bottom of the triangle, the wider the flare.*

3) Pin the panels in place. I cut the very tip of the triangle off but in hind sight, I don’t think that it’s a nessessary step. Turn your pants inside out and find the front seam. Take one triangle and place it in the seam wrong side up. Fold the tip of the triangle a little and place it inside the ripped seam. Pin down both sides. Repeat for the remaining 3 seams and panels.

4) Lastly I sewed all the panels in. A half inch seam worked best. Then zigzag stitch the seams so they didn’t fray.

Pinning the Seams
1) We’ll start with the back seam. My back seam was a variant of a french seam — the raw edges are completely enclosed. Observing other jeans I have, this seems to be common. It was made by taking one side, making it about a half inch longer then the other, folding over, folding again, then stitching. So that’s what we’re going to recreate now.

Start taking the pins out one by one and repinning so that the side that was highter in the original pants is a little under a half inch higher now.

Once that’s done, fold the seam over the other and then, in the same directon, fold both sides together one more time.

Pin so that the seam is flat against the table.

Repin the whole thing so that the pins are on the right side of the skirt and follow the seam the way it wants to go (when you look at the skirt from the right side, you’ll see that there is one side that is higher than the other, follow the top seam) pinning the pannel seam to the side.

2) The front seam was top stitched instead of french seamed. With the skirt inside out, sew a half inch seam allowance and then zig-zag stitch. Turn right side out and pin down the front seam to one side and again follow it along one side of the panel.

3) For the sides. Follow the same concept as the other two and pin the seam on each panel down to one side.

Time to sew
1) Personally I stay stitched all of the seams in order to remove all the pins… you don’t have to do this, it just made it easier for me. If you do stay stitch, remember to remove it at the end.

2) Top stitching. Now’s the time to pull out the top stitching jean thread. In order to get the stitches more evenly matched I pulled the skirt through from the back to the front of my mahine so I was able to start stitching near the waist instead of the hem of the skirt. Pick which side you want to start on and match up your needle with one of the already existing top stitches from the original pants. Keeping that distance down the seam, start sewing to the bottom of the skirt. Repeat with the next top stitch of the same seam. Once your done with that you should have two parallel lines of topstitching that closely resmbles the original pants.

*note: instead of backstitching here, I just held firmly onto the skirt so the machine stitched in place a couple of times. *

3) Repeat for the other 3 seams.

4) you’re almost there! The hem — huzzah! Fold the hem twice. The first fold is a little under 1/2 inch and the second is a little over 1/2 inch. Pin as you go.

5) Sew the hem. I turned the skirt right side out and chose a decorative stitch for my hem. It’s not nesesary. You can choose to use your topstitching thread or your coordinating fabric thread. Press the hem to get it looking nice and crisp.

*note: When you go over the extra thick hems you may run into problems with the machine. Going from 4 layers of denim to 2 layers of cotton caused the foot to get a little wonky and the machine to skip some stitches so the end result is that it messed up some of the decorative stitch on the cotton. You’ll just need to pull a little harder in the back of the fabric and kind of roll with it*

6) Trim threads and enjoy!

**A couple closing thoughts. I did not press any of my seams. Not untill the end did I pull out the iron at all. It’s not the kosher way of going about this but it’s just me. Not pressing will require you to do a little more fidgeting to get things matching up correctly but I’m one who would chose to get a little frustrated over pulling out the iron.

Also, because you’re working with what was origianlly a finished item, there will be places, like the front and back seams, where you’re going to need to fidget a bit to get it to sit right when it’s finished. Keep putting the skirt on and re pinning and re positioning till you get rid of the puckers that are caused by the crotch shaping of the pants.**

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