Tuesday, November 03, 2009

How to extend the life of hand me downs

With 2 girls I'm lucky that Isla has many hand me downs. It's fun to open a box that has been packed up for a year and half or more. So many cute clothes, some that were barely worn but others like these jeans that were well loved. So instead of just buying new ones, since I'm cheap, I mean environmentally conscience and not wanting to waste :) - I patched them up.
I played around with circle patches but they looked boring so I made the circles into flowers. I used some iron on adhesive on the fabric to attach them to the pants.

Then using a zig-zag with a super short stitch length I went around the flower. It was a little tricky to get up the pant leg and around the flower.

I love how the turned out. I have another pair of jeans that could use a patch - I'm thinking butterflies patches next time.

I love how they look like I bought them this way and not just patching up old pants.

5 comments:

Heather - Dollarstorecrafts.com said...

Those are cute! Good work!

Mad in Crafts said...

Super cute. This would be a great idea to reinforce pants for little crawlers too!

Vone said...

It would be great for crawlers - maybe out of fleece or something so it gives a little padding.

I found another pair to work on - I think stars this time.

LiEr said...

Hello Vone! Thank you for visiting. Joy (at 21 Wale) is my sister-in-law. I love what you've done with the flower patches on these jeans! And the fabric is so cute! I am so going to borrow this idea - but for my own horrible shredded-knee jeans. My girls hardly wear their jeans (they love dresses, sigh) so their knees are pristine. Thank you for the inspiration!

Vone said...

Very happy to inspire. I'm totally inspired to get back to real pattern making from just discovering your blog.
My oldest girl loves dresses but she's been good about not wearing them all the time, which is nice.