Sewing Organizer Using Old Jeans

My son had a pair of jeans that were new looking but the back had a pretty bad tear. “What a shame” I thought, “to throw these almost new looking pants away. What can I make with them?”

In my hunt for a use for them I found a tutorial for the following sewing organizer. I started to make it but then decided to branch off (gasp! I know that’s a real shocker 🙂 )on my own.

So here you have Elisabeth’s tutorial for a Sewing Organizer.

Materials needed:

1 pair of jeans for background

4 jean pockets

thread

iron-on applique’s

ric-rac or other decorative item

dowel

1 yd. rope

Here are the jeans after I cut the legs off. What I’m trying to say is this was not how they looked when my son gave them to me. 🙂

Cut off outer seam on pant leg.

Hem edges. (be sure to leave original pant hem)

Fold over at top leaving opening big enough for dowel to slide through. Stitch down. The first time I folded it over 1/4″ then folded it over about 1″ and sewed it down. Then I realized that my pant leg was too long for my pockets. It would look better shorter. So I shortened it. When I did that I had to redo this step and I decided to fudge and not fold it the 1/4″ but just to fold it 1″ and be done with it.

After you cut the pockets off the pants you will need to be sure you take the back part of the pocket off, also.

Sew any decorations you want on to the pockets before you sew them onto the background fabric. In my case I had flower applique’s so I used ric-rac as my stems.

Add your applique’s and the dowel rod. Cut the rope to the size desired. To prevent unravelling, I burnt the ends and dipped them in cold water. Tie onto your dowel.