DIY: Restyling old jeans

How to revamp those old jeans taking up too much wardrobe space, yet you can't bear to part with.

I had a few pairs of old jeans that I don't really wear anymore and I decided to do a little DIY-ing with them. 

So if you've got a few pairs of old jeans sitting in your wardrobe and you don't wear them, but you just cant part with them, here's a few things you can do with them.  Hope you like it!! :) 

These are the old jeans, the denims are Only and the Khaki ones are Penneys.

Boyfriend style distressed denim jeans:

For this DIY I used the lighter denim jeans on the right hand side of the first picture.

For this you'll need: 

• old jeans
• fabric scissors
• tweezers 
• light grain sandpaper/emery board/steal bristle brush

1. Try on the jeans, make sure they're a comfortable fit, I wanted mine to be a loose fit on the legs for the perfect boyfriend style jean. Roll up the legs of the jeans to the length you want them to be. At this stage if you want to keep the jeans rolled up you can put a few stitches in the seam to hold the folds in place when you get them how you like them. 

2. Using chalk, mark on the jeans where you want to cut them.

Chalk marking where to cut.

3. Using a sharp scissors make horizontal cuts along where you've marked the jeans with the chalk. Try to keep these cuts as straight as possible so to not cut the white horizontal threads in the jeans. Hopefully you'll do a better job of cutting straight than I did.

4. Then using a tweezers pull out the blue vertical threads from the jeans and expose the white inner threads. 

5. Do this with all the blue threads, and repeat with all the cuts you've made in the jeans until you get the distressed-ness you're looking for. When you've pulled out all the blue threads you'll have something that looks like this. 

6. Cut off any loose threads that have been pulled. Don't worry about it looking very square washing it a few times will get rid of that look. As well as that you can go over the threads with some sandpaper or an emery board to distress it more and make it look less uniform. 

7. Repeat this process everywhere you want to cut on the jeans, throw them in the washing machine and then they're ready to wear. 

This is how they should look when finished.

I paired them with brown wedges for a more summery look.

Frayed denim shorts: 

For this DIY I used the Khaki coloured jeans as I wanted a different colour shorts because all mine are plain denim.  

For this you'll need:

• Old jeans
• Scissors
• Sharp knife
• Wire brush/Sand paper

1. Using another pair of denim shorts that you like how they fit measure on the jeans how short you want the new shorts to be. 
Make sure to align at the crotch and not the waistband because some jeans have a longer body than others. 

2. Using chalk mark on the jeans where you want to cut them. 

3. Cut along the chalk lines. 

4. Using the knife and the wire brush cut the seams and fray them with the wire brush. (Sand paper and emery boards work for this too, but I found the wire brush was easier and quicker to use to get the results I wanted.)

Cut down with the knife to pull the threads out more.

Brush along the edge with wire brush to fray it more. 

6. Put the shorts in the washing machine to fray them more, the more you wash them, the more frayed the ends will eventually get. 

They should look something like this.

7.Styling the shorts: I wanted these shorts for a festivaly look, so I paired them with a pair of chunky boots and a loose fitting black tank top.

How they look on.

With boots and top.

(P.S sorry for the crappy mirror photos, my mirror is pretty small, and there was no one home to take the pictures so this was the best I could do.)

I ended up not using the 3rd pair of jeans, and instead gave them to my mam, but there's plenty of other ways to recycle and restyle old jeans to make them new again. 

If you've any ideas for another jeans DIY leave me a comment and I'll try to do them. 

If you liked this DIY follow my blog for more similar posts to come soon. 

MK xo