Hello and welcome to another episode of Make, Thrift, Buy, the show where YOU guys send
in interesting, weird or mass-produced clothes that you’ve seen on the internet, and then
I do my best to recreate them.
Today’s episode has been suggested by a number of you – thank you to Sophie, Jade and
agus for this suggestion.
So this is probably the least ridiculous pair of cut-out jeans that I’ve seen so far – have
you guys seen those “cut out” jeans where the entire front part – and even some of
the back – is missing?
I have, because so many of you guys keep SENDING me photos of them.
And they make me MAD.
Number 1, because THIS IS SO EASY TO D-I-Y DON'T SPEND $100 ON THESE!
Literally - get thrift store jeans, cut them with scissors.
Also what the heck.
Is the aesthetic to pretend that you’ve been mauled and escaped from a wearwolf or
something?
That you’re too poor to have a nice pair of jeans but not really because you've actually
spent $100 on UNIF for them?
*FASHION*
But anyway, today, we’re going to use these as inspiration to make our own pair of heart
cutout jeans.
These are originally from a Japanese brand called Fig and Viper but they are no longer
available anymore.
So what are we waiting for – let’s get started.
First, I thrifted myself a pair of fairly loose-fitting jeans – but, you can use any
jeans that you want for this DIY.
Next I figured out where I wanted to place my heart cutouts, which is one big one on
the front HERE, and three smaller hearts on the back down here, here and here.
Now I’m going to make heart templates.
Using a bit of scrap paper, I folded it in half, and then drew half a heart onto it like
this.
Then I cut this out, and unfolded, I have a perfectly symmetrical heart.
I made sure that these hearts were the same size as the cutouts that I wanted on the jeans.
I also put the jeans on, and I marked out exactly where I wanted the cutouts to be using
some pins.
Then I turned the jeans inside out, and I made chalk marks where the pins are – I’m
moving the placement just slightly over to the left to get the cutouts right in the centre
of the leg – and then I took the pins out.
Now I’m going to show you how to do just one of the heart cutouts, but this will be
the same deal for all 4 heart cutouts that I make.
Now, if you want the heart cutouts to maintain their shape while you're wearing your jeans,
especially if you're using a loose-fitting pair, then you will definitely want to use
interfacing.
This is some light, woven fusible interfacing that you can basically just iron straight
down onto the wrong side of your fabric.
I needed the interfacing the be just slightly larger than the cutout, so using the appropriate-sized
heart template for the cutout that I was doing, I cut a piece of interfacing a bit bigger
than this heart.
I rounded-out the edges of the interfacing, and then placed it fusible-side down onto
the inside of my jeans, in the spot that I wanted my heart cutout to sit.
The next step was to iron it onto the inside of the jean's leg.
Now I'm ironing them on two-at-a-time here to save time.
First I quickly went over the interfacing with the iron to make sure it was stuck down,
and then got a cotton shirt and I placed this over the top, and I pressed down on this for
about 30 seconds.
The interfacing is now stuck onto the jeans.
So next I placed the heart template directly onto the spot where I wanted the cutout to
be, and I traced around it, directly onto the interfacing.
Then, I drew a smaller heart, like this, about 5/8ths of an away from the edge of the larger
heart.
Then, with a pair of scissors, I cut out the smaller heart, making sure that I was only
cutting through ONE layer of the jeans, not through both layers, which I did by putting
my hand inside the jeans to separate the two sides.
Next, I made little slits around the shape wherever there was a curve, or a point.
So, I’m going to make little slits that go all the way to the bigger heart’s outline,
using some scissors, like this.
These small cuts then let me then fold the fabric back towards the big heart’s outline,
like this.
After folding the pieces back, I put some pins through it like this, to keep it secure.
And just a note, at the pointy, top “V” of the heart, you’ll need to cut off some
of the edges so that they won’t be visible through the cutout.
Once I’d gone all the way around the heart shape, it looked like this, and the next step
was to simply sew these pieces down, using a straight stitch, all the way around the
heart.
Now, it was a little bit tricky getting the jeans onto the machine – because I wanted
to make sure that I’m only sewing through ONE layer of the jeans, otherwise I’d sew
up the leg hole – but, trust me, with a bit of perseverance, it can be done!
Then, starting starting at one of the “sharp” corners of the heart shape, I carefully stitched
about half an inch away from the cutout’s edge, making sure that I was sewing down all
of the little “flappy bits” of fabric.
I went pretty slowly here and I made sure that I removed my pins just before I went
over them with my needle.
When I wanted to turn the presser foot to sew around the curvy edge of the heart, I
put my needle down, lifted up the presser foot, and then rotated my material underneath,
put the foot back down, and then continued on sewing.
Also, the bottom thread will be visible on the outside of the jeans, around the cutout,
so I made sure that I was using a thread in a similar colour to the jeans.
However, if you wanted contrasting stitching, then feel free to use whatever colour thread
that you want!
Also, to save paper and to maintain consistent heart-shapes, I started out with my largest
heart cutout and as I made them smaller, I used the same piece of paper.
I simply folded the template back in half, drew a smaller heart inside the previous one,
cut this out, and then unfolded this gave me my new template – which I used to do
the same thing for yet another, smaller, cutout.
Also, I noticed tiny bits of fraying at the corners of my cutout, so I made sure that
these won’t fray anymore by applying a little bit of fabric glue to these spots, and you
could also use something like fray-check if you have it.
Then I gave everything an iron to make the cutouts nice and crisp, and, I’m done!
So, how did I go?
[MUSIC PLAYS]
There are two things that I’ve learned from doing this, that I think would improve this
project if I were to do it again: The first is to use a pair of jeans with thicker
denim.
My jeans are actually made out of this kinda weird, super light-material - according to
the tag, they are "lifestyle denim", whatever that means - but they’re less like your
typical denim and more like dress-fabric.
I think that the hearts would retain their shapes a little bit better if normal-to-heavy
weight denim was used.
The second is that I think this would probably work better on a pair of tight-fitting or
skinny jeans.
The original jeans have the same problem as mine – the heart kind of gets distorted
and warped if your leg isn’t out like THIS.
I mean, the shapes still look like hearts, for the most part, when you are just standing
normally - BUT they would look like hearts all of the time if you were to use skin-tight
jeans.
Nonetheless, this method still does work really well to give you cute cutouts in your jeans
so my conclusion is: to thrift a pair of jeans or use an old pair of jeans and make these
for yourself.
[Scissor snipping and zipper sound effect]
OKAY- one thing you wanna make sure of when you’re wearing these jeans:
put some sunscreen under them holes.
Or you’ll get a sunburn in the shape of a heart.
Actually.... that sounds kinda cool.
But you know what's also cool, kids - SKINCARE!
Skincare is cool.
I will not be held responsible anyone trying to tan the shape of a heart into their leg.
Do something more beneficial with your time and…
Go support me on Patreon!
Heyooooo!
Thanks for watching, subscribing to my channel, and I’ll see you all next time.
Bye!
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