Jean Bag

Let's travel in a time machine back to the first semester of 1st year university! Yaaaay!

Ok, so there's no time machine actually required, but let's take a look at one of my projects from way back then.

THE DENIM PROJECT: take a pair of jeans and hem, mend, or turn them into something else. I chose the last option. RECYCLING! ;D

  I picked a pair of black jeans (they were super faded and no longer look black) that I had worn a hole in the inner thigh that was going to be a pain to fix, (This ALWAYS happens to all my jeans.) and I got paint on them too.

I ripped out the side seams and inner leg seams instead of cutting them so I could salvage as much fabric as possible.

Realizing that pants are made so there is more fabric on your butt to account for the curve in your body this meant that my front panel on my bag (the front of the pants) was going to be too low and not have the depth I wanted for this bag. So I sewed two pieces of fabric together to create an inner pocket that adjusted for this difference in height. 

I took these 2 pieces and surged them together. Because I had access to the school's serger. Sooo nice. I want one...

There is a bit of a gap in documentation here, as I forgot my camera, and then I lost my camera. So yeah.... There aren't any pictures of how this went together until after I finished the project... hahaha

What I did next: I created the back panel of the bag using 2 rectangles of fabric from the legs, Then I attached the butt-pocket rectangle for the flap. Then I added another long rectangle for a side/bottom piece. Unfortunately I ran out of fabric at this point and had to find another pair of trashed jeans the same colour to make the handle. :P

 Here's the finished pics! 1 year later! Yay!

My fabulous messenger bag. :D