Do It Yourself Tuesdays: Ripped Jeans

By Alex

[Ever see something you want but don’t have the money to buy? Ever get sick of studying/watching TV and have the urge to get crafty and make things on your own? We know! Us too! We just don’t know where to start, which is why we got some of CollegeCandy’s craftiest writers to share their favorite DIY projects with everyone. So get to your nearest craft store for the essentials and let’s make some fun sh*t.]

In the past few years, ripped jeans have taken over the Abercrombie/American Eagle world and have now moved to high fashion, being featured on recent Alexander Wang and Martin Margiela runways. Since even the biggest fashionistas are now embracing the trend, I figure I might as well jump on the bandwagon.

Imagine my surprise when I went shopping for a pair of ripped jeans only to find that they were priced about $20 more than their unripped counterparts! Now this just seemed wrong to me; I’m getting holey jeans that are bound to fall apart faster, but I’m paying more? It’s a bit backwards if you ask me.

So being a frugal fashionista, I decided to try my hand at making my own ripped jeans! I have a pile of jeans I never wear sitting around from the 5 buck sale at Old Navy or 50% off day at Value Village; I might as well turn them into something useful. Inspired by these grey shorts by Alexander Wang, I began my adventure.

Ingredients:

- One pair of jeans

- A pencil

- A seam-ripper

- Sandpaper (optional)

DIY Recipe:

1. Make sure your jeans are pre-washed or else your rips will be misplaced and may end up exposing more skin than you intended.

2. Try the jeans on and mark where you want the rips with your pencil.

3. Lay the jeans on a flat surface, get your seam-ripper and make a rip over your pencil mark. I find a seam-ripper to work much better than scissors because it encourages fraying (WHICH IS WHAT YOU WANT).

4. Pull out some of the threads around the rip to encourage fraying

5. To make the tears look more “real” you may want to distress around them with sandpaper (thins out the fabric and makes the rip look like a wear hole). You can also distress other parts of the jeans or rip around the pockets and belt loops with the seam ripper to add to the overall distressed look.

6. Toss your pants in the wash. The more you wash ‘em, the more fraying and distressing you will see. You may need to put them through a few cycles before the fraying looks the way you want it to.

And here is my finished product:

So trendy. So chic. And so much cheaper than what those fools at True Religion are charging!

Good luck!