What if I Ripped Some Jeans?
- Lauren Erickson
- Jan 26, 2018
- 3 min read
Yesterday was my first ever What if Wednesday. My awesome little sister (not that little, she’s 16) looked through Pinterest to find 2 options for my Wednesday endeavor. The 2 pins she chose were making Gingerbread Brownies, or Ripped Jeans.
I put a poll on my Instagram story and the results were
48% Brownie 52% Jeans
Jeans won!
I had never even thought about doing this before but I was excited to tear up some pants!
I followed the instructions from the eHow blog post that the pin linked to.
Finding Pants
So… I don’t actually have old jeans I could rip up. Typically, that’s what you’d use. I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on jeans I was going to rip. So, I headed to DI with a friend to scope out some options. I wasn’t terribly picky, but the fact that I’m a 5’11’’ woman wasn’t in my favor. There were lots of elastic, no-zipper, mom jeans that I thought I’d pass on (you know, to spare the eyes of the children). But alas, no suitable jeans.
Later I went to good old Wall-E World (Walmart, no shame) and tried on over a dozen pairs of jeans. Finally I found a $20 pair of skinny jeans that fit. I also picked up the other supplies: sandpaper (which took me forever to find) and a fabric marker.
Drawing Inspiration and On My Jeans
Following the first step of the how-to post, I drew on my jeans with the fabric marker where I would rip. I got my inspiration from these pins. (below)
And here's my blue marker on my blue jeans.
Let the Ripping Begin
I cut a little hole and started going to town with the sandpaper on it. It was easier to grip a small piece of sandpaper to have control. I sanded down the small sections and the rip in my left knee.
Horizontal Threads
For the bigger hole in my jeans, I was trying to do something to make horizontal threads visible. I followed the advice from this blog post that showed a little more detail on how to make a hole with horizontal threads in place. I cut and then used tweezers to pull out individual vertical threads. (shout out to my roommate Caitlyn for letting me borrow her tweezers). This part took a looong time. It was definitely the most difficult part of the whole project. I tried my best not to make it not look like a giant square cut out of my jeans by rounding out the edges.
Wash and Dry
I followed the instructions and washed them Thursday morning. Then I put them in the dryer for 10 min and hung them up.
Before and After Wash
Result
Honestly, I think they turned out pretty good. It took longer than I expected but I was simultaneously watching Psych, and not in a hurry, and a perfectionist. Thus, it probably won’t take you as long to do it. I’m honestly excited to have some new jeans to wear though! (I wear my black ones wayy to much)
Suggestions
I would suggest focusing specifically on one example and following where the rips are on that pair only. With my pair, I feel like I could’ve done a smaller main hole or do a lot more rips to balance it out. My jeans feel a bit like an awkward in-between a little and a lot.
Recommend?
Totally. It was really fun to do this project and it went better than I thought. I wouldn’t have done it without What if Wednesday. (Or I would have, but not followed a tutorial, and gone rogue-but not in the good Star Wars way).
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