My hubby goes through jeans like you wouldn't believe. But he rarely wears them out. Somehow he usually manages to catch them on something and rip a large unrepairable hole in them. And then he sews them up with baling twine and gets a few more uses out of them. (Baling twine is like duct tape, you can fix just about anything with it!)
Since the hole is usually around the pockets or zipper areas, the legs are still in great condition. After throwing out a few ripped pairs, I thought there must be something I can do with these and began saving some of them. One day I ran across a tutorial for making rice bags to heat up and I thought to myself wouldn't the leg of one of those jeans be perfect for that? I finally got around to trying it out and thought I would share it with you!
First you will need to cut off one of the legs as close to the back pocket as you can get.
My first attempt was to just sew the bottom closed and then fill with rice. Unless you have a super strong needle in your sewing machine though, you will break your needle sewing through the seams. (Just ask me how I know that!) So instead I cut the seams off to get two pieces like this:
Next you will need to put the pieces together, right sides facing each other, and sew 3 sides closed. You will have a long tube with one of the short ends open. Turn it right side out and dump in about 1 cup of rice. Then you will sew across the tube to keep the rice in about a 4 inch section.
Keep adding a cup of rice and sewing across until you get to the end of your tube. If you want all the sections the same size, you can measure and mark them before you add the rice, but I just eye-balled it and they all turned out fairly close to the same size. Then just tuck the end inside and sew across one final time.
On the next cold night, just pop it in the microwave for about 5 minutes and then tuck it into your bed to keep you toes toasty warm!
I made one for each of the kids and they love having them in their beds at night to keep warm! I also used a few 6 inch square scraps to make a couple hand warmers.
So I made a small dent in my pile of ripped jeans. Any other good suggetions?
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2 comments:
smart idea ... I also wonder if you could fill jeans legs w/ batting or something like sand to make door guards (that prevent cold air from coming in under doors & around windows)?? I bought one at Dollar General for $6 - but you could practically make one for FREE w/ old jeans!
PS I finally added your blog button to my blog today :)
I would save them for patches for when your man rips his newest pair! I love rice bags too. You could cut a bunch of triangles and make a streamer flag to hang in the kids room. Or make a valentine mobile like this: http://dottieangel.blogspot.com/2011/01/have-heart-how-to.html to hang in their room, just for fun. I made a hand bag out of an old pair of jeans once. You could make mats for the kids. Cut up the leg of the jeans and lay open and then cut huge squares, put an old cloth diaper or batting in then sandwich it with a cute print and make a mat for sitting on. Could help with circle time or schooling or just taking a time out for reflection. They wouldn't have to be huge. Just like 16" x 16" or however big the leg is cut open.
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