It's a Creative World: Reuse, recycle

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Reuse, recycle - Denim aprons

It's wonderful to be back! It seemed appropriate to do a post about new life on Easter Sunday.

We have so many pairs of jeans that have been either grown out of or are worn (normally the knees!) that I wanted to find a way to use them. I started by googling denim and had a good look at the images, Pinterest was also a great source of inspiration and allowed me to "pin" the designs I liked. I'm obviously not the only one who's loves this fabric and wanted to get a bit more out of it, there were thousands of ideas and I settled on aprons.

This was my first attempt, it used one leg of my husbands jeans (the one without the hole!), split it up one seam and I bound it (pretty badly) with a bit of gingham I had hanging around the place. For decoration I added some lace and I made a quick rosette style flower. The strap for the neck is the button edging off an old maternity dress and the waist ties literally the ties from the same dress. I learnt something there though - the buttons get caught in your hair.. Opps! Also I needed to adjust the length of the strap. It's also not very wide so that need to be changed for adults.

Design 2 After a little more research I saw that you could split the legs of the jeans and sew them into one panel. It really is very easy, split the crotch and overlap oneside over the other and sew it together, a bit like the denim skirts that were popular a few years ago. I decided to use the back of the jeans to utilse the pockets already there. I drew round a favourite cooking apron to make a newspaper pattern for the top bib shape. I then cut 2 squares from the front of a leg sewed them together to make a larger square for the bib top. Jeans with nice logos can be used and make an additional feature. This time the waist strap was just blue spotty cotton and I liked the idea of using the belt loops, already in place - wonderful. The neck strap, I changed from the last design and used a seam cut both sides and velcro allow it to be altered. I like apron straps to be tied in the front so I made them long, tying in the front is just so much easier.

This one again uses the back but in a different colour denim looks fantastic. Again I changed the neck strap and found a d-ring was perfect. I went with green spots for my Mother-outlaw and tried a different kind of ruffle across the top. The beauty is you can add as many additional accessories as you want - buttons, bows, ribbons or lace or just plain.

My children were then after aprons for their crafting and cooking. My son loves inking and less splashes on clothes sounded good but I didn't want his to look so skirt like. What's nice is as with everyting home made you can start a project and tweak it for the person you are making it for. We cut the jeans into pieces and realised that 2 legs wide would wrap it round his waist a bit more. We split the legas and sewed them all together. We used the front of the jeans for the bib. Grey webbing for the straps gave it a more masculine feel. It is now great for ink, woodwork and gardening, super!

For girls you can go mad and my daughters is just a little sweet and cutesy but she choose the strap fabric - cupcakes, buttons, heart ribbon and loves it!