k, I was watching an episode of "Changing Rooms", and one of the designers had on this fantastic patch jean pants! Many rectangles of contrasting jeans material sewn together, basically. Now. Here's the hard part - any ideas on how to make it? I'm 17 and don't sew a lot - I'm more of a knitter.
Somebody help me, please!

---^-<@
hellflower

I really don't have any experience in this, but when I saw that no one had posted I took pity and decided to offer my two cents.

I would think you would get a pattern for jeans, and make a denim quilt-like thing as big as the fabric you needed, and use that. It seems like you would waste some of your hard work when you discard all the extra material though.

Yep, that's what an older thread on this says, anyway. Denim is hard enough to sew without having to seam through quilted denim, though.

sounds really cool.

I'm not much of a sew-er either but can't you just take jeans and then sew the patches right on top? I guess that would only work if you wanted the frayed ends to show... I didn't see the show and so I don't REALLY know what they look like..

doing this will also probably make your jeans thick...unless you use jeans that are super thin...

Okay I consider myself an expert on denim since I made an entire full-length coat out of old jeans.

What I would do would be to buy a pattern that looks the way you want and fit it to you, (meaning make a mock pair out of cheap fabric and have someone who likes you pin it so it fits right...most patterns don't fit formt he get-go)

Once you have a muslin (the mock pair) begin sewing patches together. It's up to you how big or small to make them. A sewing machine would make this faster but you can hand sew if you do't mind taking a few months.

Your goal here is to make patchwork fabric big enough for one pattern piece. Your pattern pieces are the adjusted pieces you've taken from you muslin, not the original. . But rather than make a huge square piece of fabric and cut the pattern pieces out of that (WAAAAAAYYY too much work) Just make fabric for each pattern piece individually. Then sew the pieces together like you did in your mockup/

any questions you can e-mail me at trinithree@hotmail.com

titi

you can strip-piece a big piece of patchwork fabric, if you use denim yardage, and it would be quicker than piecing jeans-size bits. probably cheaper too, if you would have to buy old jeans instead of using ones you already have.

stella

First of all I LOVE Changing Rooms!

Also I love those jeans and I figured out a way to make them pretty easily. Take a pair of jeans, cut out front legs, but leave about a half inch or so next to seam, don't cut all the way up to the pockets either, keep this cut out and use it as your pattern of sorts, then cut up old different color jeans into squares, sew these together the same size as your cut out pattern and attach along seam. When I made mine I accidentally attached mine back inside out so all my seams showed, but I ended up loving it that way and they frayed beautifully.

I suggest try something small and simple like a bag. Pants are a little more complex. Get a pattern fron a sewing store and make the pattern out of patched up jeans.

i'm working on a skirt of patched jeans, which i find is a little easier...

just a thought. i hate making pants...
*grin*

x jessie x