Forever in Blue Jeans

Pile of old denim clothing

I had been working with vintage linens for a couple of weeks and made a couple of really wonderful pillow covers to sell in my Deb Upcycles shop on Etsy so I decided to do something different a couple of Fridays ago. I have a small cabinet full of old beat up blue jeans and other denim and I decided to play with that all day.

Well, it lasted a lot longer than a day. I started by making "a pillow or two". Cut a few pairs of jeans and then cut a few more until I had a large pile of blue jean parts.



Then I started making stuff, I cut out a bunch of potholders, eye glass cases and lots of pillows. Threaded the sewing machine with heavy duty denim thread and started sewing.

This was the hardest one to make, but I really like it. I think I'll try to make a couple more. I'm waiting for better weather to take pictures of a couple more to list them and four or five more cut out and waiting to be made. I had to stop for a little while to work on a special order from a local shop (more about that in another post). But watch Deb Upcycles on Etsy for more denim items. For some reason that pile in the first picture is growing instead of shrinking. I keep finding more denim as I go through my bins of stuff to upcycle.

About My --------- Upcycled Potholders!

 I thought I'd write a series of posts here about the things I sell in my shop DebUpcycles. Answering questions like... Why they're upcycled, how they're upcycled, what materials I use, and where I get the fabric. I don't have any big trade secrets so here it goes.

I'm going to start with my denim potholders. People, mostly men but some women (including me) wear their jeans until they're falling apart.

 Most thrift shops don't put these out, although I wish they would, so I go to the Goodwill Outlet here where they sell all the items not good enough for the stores by the pound. I also find some at yard sales where they'll either be very cheap or (awesome!) in the "free" box.

I also find scraps of cotton batting, leftovers from some ones quilt project, at various places.



 In the first potholders pictured I used scraps of denim in another shade to make the hearts and outlined them with machine stitching in red so they would stand out. In the picture above, you can see the outline of the stitching on the back of the potholder. For the ones on the left, the apples were cut from scraps I had leftover from making a pillow out of a mans shirt which was also found at the Goodwill Outlet, the leaves were just scraps I had picked up somewhere.
Everything except the thread is upcycled or used up from scraps, if I run out of something like the cotton batting I don't go running to a regular retail store for more. I just make something else until I find it again.

I love the challenge of finding ways to use the things I buy to their fullest extent. Even the scraps that are too small for anything else end up in pincushions or my compost pile as long as they're natural fibers.

Remember, we only have one Earth, it's time to start taking care of it.