Recycling Jeans

Last weekend we (my husband and I) went jeans shopping. For him. To be honest, husband, has not purchased a new pair of jeans in a LONG time. His old jeans were from Costco. It's not that I don't love Costco, but we haven't lived in Costco-range for hmmm...12 years.

The shopping proved to be quite difficult, but the resulting purge provided me with a nice supply of recycled jeans to craft. To find something worthy of the sacred jeans, I did some net research on jean recycling and didn't find anything I liked. One morning, I picked up my kids bath mat and realized that the backing was disintegrating. I decided to use some of my new stash for a bath mat.

First, I started by ripping my jean legs into 1 inch strips.

Next, I took a piece of room darkening shade material (from my stash) the size of my intendedrug. I laid a strip of jeans on the material and sewed down the center.

Once I finished the first strip I folded it to the right and laid another strip down next to the first and sewed down the middle.

Pieces were added one after the other. On end the pieces looked U shaped because each piece was sewn down the middle.

After building the pieces up I took my rotary cutter and cut off the uneven ends, squaring offthe edges. Next, I washed the rug, hoping the denim would unravel and fray. The first wash was a pain, picking all the strings off the rug when it emerged, but with each wash the rug gets cuter and cuter. I was even thinking of bleaching the rug, for a traditional white color, but decided that the blues were a a better fit with my shower curtain.