Thursday, March 27, 2014

Purple Pants...NO WAY!!!

Ok, so YES WAY!!! is the response to the title of my post.  By the way, you get to see a bunch of pictures of my legs.  Aren't you excited?!? 

Here's why...I just refashioned a pair of pants into a pair of capris...and not just any capris, but PURPLE capris!  Yes, I am Stylin'!!!

My mom gave me several pair of jeans and capris the last time she came to visit.  She's lost some weight and with my weight loss I have had a need for smaller jeans, etc.  Unfortunately I am taller than my mom and some of the jeans are petites.  It's not an attractive look on a not so petite figure, but I LOVE capris so why not transform them.  And to kick it up a notch I decided to dye them as well.

I really wanted pink...BRIGHT pink...capris, but to get bright pink capris it's helpful to start with white before dying.  I did not do that.  I didn't want to mess with bleach and hours of soaking.  I did a bunch of reading on how to dye jean and Rit's website said it wasn't necessary to bleach the jean...if you didn't care if it blended the colors instead of being pure...whatever color you buy.  So I bought Tulip bright pink and ended up with purple jeans.  I actually LOVE them!!!  Next time, however, I'm thinking bleach and PINK BABY!!!!

Next item on the agenda was to CUT!!!  Since I didn't want to wear these as Bermuda style shorts I tried them on to get the length.  I'd forgotten that these were also either bell bottoms or boot cut jeans which meant I had to contend with a flare in the bottom of the leg that started at an awkward spot for capris.  Once I cut the bottom off I turned them inside out and folded the excess over on the outside of each leg and pinned it down.  By the way, it is very difficult to hold the pant leg with one hand and pin with the other when it's on the outside of your leg.  I'm pretty sure I have a few pin scratches on my legs and perhaps a few small pin pricks as well.  Once they were pinned to my satisfaction I took a regular ink pen and marked where I wanted to sew then pinned it again.  Then I sewed straight stitch right down the pen mark.  To finish off the seam I wide zigzagged the edge connecting it to the original seam up at the top of the leg.  I left about a 4" opening at the bottom of each leg because I wanted to add a bit of lace peeking out at the bottom.  I cut off all the excess material at this point, then I zigzagged the raw edge of the opening and the bottom cut for the hem.  I turned the opening edges under to the wrong side in a V shape and straight stitched it to give it a clean edge.  I hemmed the bottom about 3/4ths of an inch and finished it with a straight stitch.  Then I added the piece of lace on both legs and sewed it into the V with a straight stitch. 

I took absolutely NO pictures of the process...I was a horrible blogger this time, but I just wanted to get this process done and put my new capris on!!!  It was a very simple process and only took me about 2 hours (cause I'm slow and a perfectionist).  Here's how they turned out.  Hopefully you can see the purple in these pictures.  It doesn't seem to come across quite as purple as they are in person. 






And see...I'm even wearing PURPLE SOCKS!!!  I'm so coordinated today!

These are going to be so much fun this summer!!!  Now I can't wait to try dying some more jean!

Till next time...


Jennifer

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