Upcycling Jeans with Ute Jensen [Pt 1]

Old jeans turned into a whale of a pencil case!

Are you having a pleasant fall (spring) season where you are? We have managed not to see any snow yet, which is always a plus this far north. But it's clear that daylight hours are dwindling as we approach the "shorter" days of late autumn, especially with the switch back to standard time later tonight.

Gotta be honest: not a fan of this time of year. But I digress...

Approximately six months before it closed down, Makerist held another of its unfathomable $2 sales. I picked up a couple of patterns by a German designer named Ute Jensen. She specializes in projects that involve upcycling old jeans, and she does it in a rather effective manner. Not satisfied with merely using denim, she quite craftily identifies elements from a basic pair of jeans that can be featured in various ways to create personality in her patterns.

Check out this whale shaped pencil case. (It can be put to myriad other uses apart from holding pencils, of course.)

Reverse view...

Notice the clever positioning of an upside down front pocket with its requisite rivet to create the top of the head for this (blue? sperm?) whale. I mean, perhaps many people can sit down and think of a way to create a pouch in the shape of a whale, but to do it with old jeans and have it be so representative takes a certain talent, don't you think?

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The project isn't exactly easy, however, given the contortions that you have to go through when working with potentially heavyweight denim. My other half's old jeans all appear to be made out of thick denim with a weave that seems to defy cutting. (God knows how he managed to get holes in them!) Whether with scissors or rotary cutter, cutting was just difficult.

Here's the template for the front pocket that forms the head of the whale...

Causing an additional problem for me was the requirement to adhere to a non-traditional seam allowance of 0.3" (or 0.76 cm). In the PDF, she refers to this as the width of her presser foot but that's obviously not a universal thing; at least, none of mine are sized like that.

In most cases, if you're consistent with using a fixed seam allowance when sewing something, you shouldn't run into issues. In this case, however, my use of a 1/4" seam allowance on the fins caused them to turn out wider than called for, which made it essentially impossible to sew the front head piece to the back piece with a regular seam (where you see the green pin in the picture below).

Not following the unconventional seam allowance made the fins too big... 

Rather than redo the fins, I opted to overlap and zigzag stitch the two pieces together, leaving an exposed raw edge. Given the overall look of this, I didn't feel as though having a couple of frayed areas would detract from the finished project.

Turning out this tail is not for the faint of heart!

The tail gave me fits, even before the sewing and turning. Again, cutting was a challenge, given the precise angles of the template and its relatively small size. Of course, the seam allowance on this piece was scant (i.e., definitely not 0.3"), meaning that turning and poking out the ends had to done extremely carefully lest you poke right through. As it was, my hemostat created a hole in the fabric just from its grip and my pulling. You may or may not be able to see the mishap in the photo above; I eventually quilted the whole thing to hide the issue.

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The zipper installation went pretty much as expected. If you have experience with zippers, this one won't cause you any concerns. Let me say here that while the instructions are a bit odd in some sections due to language translation, the whole pattern is very well documented with photos. (Also – if you don't have a pair of old jeans to sacrifice and you still want to make this – there are instructions for making it with "regular" fabric.)

View of underbelly...

Notice how the designer makes use of both sides of the denim to create contrast. (Confusingly, I recall the English translation uses the term "left side" when describing the wrong side of the fabric.) Oddly enough, some of hubby's discarded jeans are of the light wash variety: both sides look pretty much the same in terms of offering up a lighter shade of blue.

In use as a pencil case...

The pouch is capable of holding many writing instruments, if that is your desired function for the finished item. (I don't need any more pouches myself, so this is going to be a gift for a lucky little someone who might actually use it for its intended purpose.)

The lining fabric that you see was gifted to me ten years ago. In keeping with the upcycling theme, however, an old shirt that's no longer in favour might be something to consider for a lining.

All in all, a cute way to repurpose old jeans...

Unlike most other sewing projects that I've taken on in the past, this one was started, set aside, picked up, re-started, and then finished leisurely. None of the pacing was intentional; that's just how it turned out. I'm thinking that this might be the way of most of my future sewing... slow, with no defined schedule for completion. It's not like I have a lot of projects waiting in a queue; not much of what I see these days "calls" to me.

One last addition to highlight: after I took all of the photos, it occurred to me to use the zipper remnant as a zipper pull extension.

I saw this idea on a wine bottle cozy many years ago in a book that I borrowed from the library. Since I don't have any actual extra zipper pulls to put onto small remnants of #3 zippers that get chopped in projects like these, any other use that I can put them to is a plus.

While Makerist is no more, you can find Ute Jensen's patterns by searching Etsy for her shop, Jotdotshop. (Maybe you can take a look through and guess which of her other projects will be featured here in part two.)

'Til next... 🇨🇦🍁