I would love to say that all of the sewing projects I complete are made with beautiful fabrics and that our home and wardrobes are full of beautiful things I have made. But, I live in the real world with children and a husband who are busy and not at all prim and proper.

While there are a fair number of my sewing projects around our home and in our closets, most of what I sew is practical and frugal. More specifically, I do a lot of mending.

Over the weekend I spent some time altering 7 pairs of blue jeans. Not glamorous, but definitely functional.

One of my sons ripped two pairs of good jeans in one week. The first pair got ripped by a nail near the zipper. I am so thankful he wasn’t hurt. I still haven’t mended those jeans, but I will likely just stitch the holes and let them be play jeans.

The second pair got ripped at the knee from some rough play. Now, I know some people purposely do this to their jeans or pay good money for new jeans that have rips in them, but my husband and I aren’t those kind of people.

While I could have mended the rip, I decided to turn the jeans into shorts instead since it is almost summer.

The first thing I did was cut off the bottom of the pant leg with the rip. I then used that as a template to cut the same amount off of the other leg.

Then I used my jeans hemming tutorial to hem the jeans. (You may download and print the tutorial by clicking the link below.)

How to Hem Jeans

Now my son has a nice looking pair of jean shorts for summer.

While making shorts, or even capris, from a pair of jeans that are too short or have a rip at the knee is one method of altering blue jeans, here is another idea.

A few weeks ago my children and I went to a few yard sales. We picked up 6 pairs of nice jeans for my daughter for $13 total.

Julia is very skinny, so I knew that all of the jeans would probably need to be altered at the waist. She doesn’t really like belts, so most of her store bought pants get altered by adding elastic to the waist.

Thanks to a little elastic and time my daughter now has plenty of jeans to wear and she doesn’t have to worry about them falling down. 🙂 Plus, altering 6 pairs of yard sale jeans was so much cheaper than purchasing brand new jeans.

If you are interested in how I added elastic to jeans, I have created a printable tutorial for you. You may download and print it by clicking the link below.

Adding Elastic to Jeans