Tuesday How-To {Make Cut-Offs}

We have talked about Pinterest a hundred times already, and how much we love finding inspirational pins, and DIY projects. Since we missed our  Monday Blues{jeans} blog post, we thought doing a Cut-off Jean Tuesday How-To would be perfect! We found this awesome tutorial on how to take that old pair of unwanted jeans and turn them into a hot pair of wearable cut-offs.

1. Start with your old jeans and try them on.  Mark with a pen about 2" below where you think you want them to hit your legs.  Just in case, you'll give yourself that extra room since you may waste some straightening etc.  Begin to cut.
2. Cut through the top layer only, to start with, rather than chopping both off at once.  The grain is slightly different on the front and back, and you want to get a true straight line.
3. Once you've gone all the way around, fold the jeans in half and cut the other side to match as closely as possible.  They'll really look homemade if they're not symmetrical!
4. Fold them in half and look at them from different angles to make sure both sides are the same.
5. You may also want to turn them inside out, so you can see the straight grain of the denim, and shave off little bits of the edges to make them straighter.
6. Try them on again.  They should be about 1" longer than you'd like them to be.
7. Turn on your iron and head to the ironing board.  Press (using iron) about 1" of the jeans up.  No need to hem or turn under twice!  Wahooo, these are simple!
8. Now get out your needle and denim blue thread.  This part is sort of optional, I guess, but these will be most wearable if you do this step.  Basically, to lock in the cuff and rolled-up look, without always having your shorts moving around in length, you'll hand sew the cuff in place.
You'll do a running stitch, but make the stitch on top just a millimeter long, and the stitch underneath more like half an inch long.  You cover lots of ground quickly this way, but your stitches don't show on top.
If your jeans stretch at all, like mine did, you'll want to do this in a zig zag pattern.  The thread doesn't have the same give as the jeans, so by zig-zagging you give the stitch some flexibility.
9.And you're done!!!! Your jean shorts are now wearable.

Credit: http://www.adventuresindressmaking.com
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