Recycled Denim Jean Pants into Apron’s

First let me say this is a how to create your own Apron for people that can use their imagination and don’t have to have a pattern to go off of.    It was a wonderful time with friends with lots of fun, joking and imaginations going wild.  You can do this project alone or with a group but most important to remember is to have fun and give yourself a pat on the back for recycling those old ugly jeans!  Ok, they could be cute jeans also….

One of my amazing friends, Laura (see below), had this great idea that we recycled old jeans into very cool aprons.  Last summer we got a huge box of old jeans at a yardsale and she saved them until now.  She washed them all before we started (bless her heart!).   Then we called in a bunch of friends to come and have fun making aprons for a fundraiser.

                     

The first step was to have a bunch of people cutting the legs off the old jeans and unstitch the top of  the pockets off the jeans.  This creates the body of the apron (leg part) and the old pockets are resewn on the apron for pockets.  The apron’s size depends on the size of the jeans.  We had some really cute kids and adult sizes that were made.  See Katherine below cutting the legs to create the apron tops (she was also one of our top notch apron designers).

The pictures below show you what the pant leg will look like with the apron top cut out of it.

 

Here is the pant leg opened up to see the shape of the apron.  You can be really creative here and make some half size aprons also.

Jeans were then ironed and  pockets designed.  We had tons of old supplies and material to create some wonderful looking pockets.

                                            

Victoria (also our friendly neighborhood photographer) became our hand sewing Diva.  She created some fun pockets with wonderful buttons and material.  See her cute picture below…..thanks facebook for the great pic of her 🙂  Since she is always taking pictures she is not in any of these, so I found one myself… surprise Victoria!

Here are some of the great pocket designs below:

Then you just need to decided if you want to sew an edge on the entire apron or part of it.  You can use premade edging or cut other material and sew it around the edges.  If you use material you can fold the material over the edges (and tuck under) for a more professional look or leave it raw and unfinished on the edges for the Shabby Chic look.  Next you can sew the edges on with any kind of sewing matching stitch you think will look great with the rest of your designs.  Below you can see Amber (The Machine Whisperer) sewing on the edges of one of the cute kids ones we made.

Here is another picture of the trim but this is the material over the edges style:

For the apron ties you make them as long as you want so that they fit around the person that you are making the apron for (make sure to leave extra edging or material for the bow tie at the ends).   You also sew the pockets on the aprons at this time.  The sewing girls, Christina and Stephanie (hey, that’s me!) hard at work and play.

Here are some of our completed apron projects:

Related articles

• Strings Attached: The Great Urban Apron Experiment (wornjournal.com)
• Personalized Apron (cutoutandkeep.net)