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Farmsister is so goofy. So, with zero worry about whether I’d want to do this or it was a good use of my time, she presented me with an armload of worn-out jeans during my last visit. (It’s because she knows me: I love that shit.) One pair she deemed irredeemable– two pairs, really, one pair of jeans and one of the canvas Carhartts she’s had since 2002. Just, worn through the knees, worn around the pockets, already-mended, falling apart again. Cut those two up and use them to repair the other four pairs. These two are going-out jeans, these two are on-farm work pants, can you just– double the knees so they don’t wear through? She kneels a lot, in mud, so the knees go. She’s both a farmer and a mom, those are both kneeling professions, y’know?
So I did, and I had a great time. And the way you cut jeans up to use them for other stuff– well, I’ve just found, the most efficient thing to do is to stick your scissors in just at the lower rivet that secures the front pockets, and cut all the way around– below the fly zipper, below the back pockets. Then you can cut open the seams of the legs and all that fabric is usable and pretty much flat. But the stuff above– well, I’ll cut pockets off, or cut waistbands out and use them, but mostly, so far, I have them stuffed in a box. People use them for some things, like making purses, or whatever.
“I saw someone with a skirt, once,” Farmsister mused. “Like, they’d cut the jeans legs off, but then they’d put other fabric on and made a kind of swirly skirt out of the top of the jeans.”
“I could make one of those,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, surprised, “no. I have a couple of skirts, I don’t need one of those.”
… “You’re allowed to own several skirts,” I said. This woman– recently she was tidying, and she took her own varsity letter jacket from high school with its custom patches and her embroidered nickname to Goodwill because she wasn’t going to wear it again and didn’t think maybe her daughter would think that was a cool thing to have in the future– Anyway.
“No,” she said, “I don’t need another skirt.”
But then on Thursday she tagged me in a comment on Instagram, and it was an image of a bunch of women, and one of them was wearing a skirt like that. “Look at that skirt!” she wrote.
“Your birthday’s in April,” I wrote back, “and you’re allowed to own several skirts.” I have the leftover bits of the pair of jeans of hers I cut up, and I have the whole pair of Carhartts still.
So now I’m just deciding if I should patchwork a skirt out of fabric I own, or if I can allow myself to go to the store and buy fabric to make a skirt. I don’t think I need a pattern; I can either do a gored skirt or a circle skirt out of pattern generators online, and just– instead of attaching them to the waistband the pattern would generate, I’ll just size them to fit at the hips, and gather them into the hip area of the salvaged jeans waistband.
If it’s for a gift I could probably justify buying fabric. A circle skirt would be nicest out of something like rayon that drapes, but the denim would damage the rayon in the wash. Cotton it is, and thus a twelve-gore skirt, I think.
(Your picture was not posted)
Farmsister is so goofy. So, with zero worry about whether I’d want to do this or it was a good use of my time, she presented me with an armload of worn-out jeans during my last visit. (It’s because she knows me: I love that shit.) One pair she deemed irredeemable– two pairs, really, one pair of jeans and one of the canvas Carhartts she’s had since 2002. Just, worn through the knees, worn around the pockets, already-mended, falling apart again. Cut those two up and use them to repair the other four pairs. These two are going-out jeans, these two are on-farm work pants, can you just– double the knees so they don’t wear through? She kneels a lot, in mud, so the knees go. She’s both a farmer and a mom, those are both kneeling professions, y’know?
So I did, and I had a great time. And the way you cut jeans up to use them for other stuff– well, I’ve just found, the most efficient thing to do is to stick your scissors in just at the lower rivet that secures the front pockets, and cut all the way around– below the fly zipper, below the back pockets. Then you can cut open the seams of the legs and all that fabric is usable and pretty much flat. But the stuff above– well, I’ll cut pockets off, or cut waistbands out and use them, but mostly, so far, I have them stuffed in a box. People use them for some things, like making purses, or whatever.
“I saw someone with a skirt, once,” Farmsister mused. “Like, they’d cut the jeans legs off, but then they’d put other fabric on and made a kind of swirly skirt out of the top of the jeans.”
“I could make one of those,” I said.
“Oh,” she said, surprised, “no. I have a couple of skirts, I don’t need one of those.”
… “You’re allowed to own several skirts,” I said. This woman– recently she was tidying, and she took her own varsity letter jacket from high school with its custom patches and her embroidered nickname to Goodwill because she wasn’t going to wear it again and didn’t think maybe her daughter would think that was a cool thing to have in the future– Anyway.
“No,” she said, “I don’t need another skirt.”
But then on Thursday she tagged me in a comment on Instagram, and it was an image of a bunch of women, and one of them was wearing a skirt like that. “Look at that skirt!” she wrote.
“Your birthday’s in April,” I wrote back, “and you’re allowed to own several skirts.” I have the leftover bits of the pair of jeans of hers I cut up, and I have the whole pair of Carhartts still.
So now I’m just deciding if I should patchwork a skirt out of fabric I own, or if I can allow myself to go to the store and buy fabric to make a skirt. I don’t think I need a pattern; I can either do a gored skirt or a circle skirt out of pattern generators online, and just– instead of attaching them to the waistband the pattern would generate, I’ll just size them to fit at the hips, and gather them into the hip area of the salvaged jeans waistband.
If it’s for a gift I could probably justify buying fabric. A circle skirt would be nicest out of something like rayon that drapes, but the denim would damage the rayon in the wash. Cotton it is, and thus a twelve-gore skirt, I think.
(Your picture was not posted)
