Holey jeans to cute shorts

Not just ordinary cut off jean shorts. I saw something in blog land a few weeks ago about adding a ruffle to the bottom of jean shorts. I have a couple of girls who I knew would love it, so I added it to my "I want to do" list in my head. The first day of summer vacation we cleaned out drawers and threw stuff away, put stuff in the laundry (who? my kids?), made a pile for donations, and a pile for mom to sew. I ended up with only two pairs of pants to add ruffles to. Here is how they turned out:


Here is an abbreviated tutorial:

1. Cut off pants above the holes in the knees.
2. Make two long strips of your fabric choice, about a yard long by 4 inches wide.
3. Sew the short ends together, forming a loop.
4. Fold the loop in half lengthwise so wrong sides are together.
5. Baste 3/8" inch on unfolded side of loop, leaving tails at the ends and not backstitching.
6. Pull up basting stitches so the long loop gathers itself.
7. Pin raw edges to the raw edges of the pant edge and pin so loop is same size as pant opening.
8. Sew.
9. Flip to the right side and press.
10. Top stitch close to the edge so you sew down the seam allowance on the inside.
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OR instead of gathering, you can make little folds in the long loop so it looks like little pleats, like I did on the darker pants in the pictures.

So don't throw away holey jeans if they still fit! Transform them.

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