Hey!
Welcome to Make Thrift Buy, the show where YOU send in clothes that you’ve seen online
– clothes that are either expensive, mass-produced, or the brand just doesn’t make efforts to
pay their workers a living wage – and then I do my best to recreate them.
So today I’m doing an item that’s been suggested by … oh… about a BILLION of
you.
Coming in at a cool $95 are these pair of mom jeans from Topshop, that feature little
windows for your knees.
Assumedly the windows are there so that your knees can gaze out upon the world, no longer
constricted by cruel, opaque fabrics.
#freetheknee
Anyway – the internet has been divided by these jeans and my social media has been flooded
with requests asking me to try and recreate them, so I’m basically just doing them so
I can go back on my twitter account without having to scroll through pages and pages of
these damn jeans.
So let’s get started.
***
So I took myself to the thrift store – I went to a warehouse sized-one that I know
has a lot of pairs of jeans – and the quest for a suitable pair of mom jeans commenced.
After trying on like 30 different pairs of jeans – I finally found my perfect pair
of mom jeans.
They fit snugly on the waist but they are nice and loose on the legs.
The main thing you want to look for in any pair of jeans you’re using for this project,
is that it should have lots of loose fabric around the knee.
This project won’t really work with tight-fitting jeans.
So while wearing the jeans, I grabbed some chalk and I roughly measured out where I wanted
the top and the bottom of the cutouts to be.
As you can see, I’m bending my leg a lot in this process, that’s because I wanted
to make sure my knees would be around the middle of the cutout.
If you measure only while your legs are straight you’ll probably make the cutouts a little
bit too high.
These jeans also had a really cute pocket on the side down here, but unfortunately it’s
in the way of the cutouts, so I had to remove the top part of the pocket just to make life
easier.
Then, I laid the jeans out flat on my table, and I made the chalk lines thicker and I also
made sure they were even on both legs and the same height as each other by using a ruler.
I then made small chalk marks exactly in the centre of the pant legs, by measuring the
width of the pant leg and dividing this by 2, and then I drew on rectangles that were
4 and a half by 7 inches.
Of course, the length of your rectangles might differ slightly depending on where you drew
your first chalk marks but this is a good ball-park measurement of the size that your
cutouts should be.
Then using a pair of fabric scissors I chopped out the fabric inside the rectangles.
Then at the corner of each rectangle, I made small slits like this at 45 degrees, each
about half an inch long.
Then, I turned my jeans INSIDE OUT, make sure you turn them inside out before this next
step, and I folded the edges of the cutouts back like this.
Now, we’re going to sew these pieces down, using some thread in a matching colour to
the jeans.
Now you can hand-stitch this, but if you’re doing this on a sewing machine, you’ll need
to do some clever folding so that you don’t sew through the back of the jeans as well.
So, I manipulated my jeans like this, to make sure that I’d only be sewing through the
FRONT fabric of the jeans, and then I sewed down this edge using a straight stitch and
a normal sewing needle.
And I repeated this for all of the raw edges around the cutouts.
Annnnd don’t goof up and sew one of these flaps on the wrong way like I did here – I
accidentally sewed this flap to the right side of the jeans, and didn’t notice that
I'd done this until after I’d sewn on the plastic – and I spent a lot of time unpicking
my stitches.
Don't do this!
ANYWAY, next I grabbed my plastic material.
This is flexible PVC plastic that I had remaining from this plastic skirt that you guys got
me to make back in episode #33 – I think it was originally meant to be a table protector?
– and I laid it on top of one of my cutouts, and then I drew out a rectangle shape directly
onto the plastic, making the rectangle slightly larger than the cutout.
And…
damn, I accidentally drew onto my fabric here, luckily the jeans are still inside out so
it doesn’t really matter!
Anyway I finished drawing on that rectangle and then I cut it out.
Now actually sewing the plastic onto the inside of the cutouts is a little bit tricky and
took me a while to work out, because there’s a lot of fabric that you DON’T want to sew
through in the way!
If you just put this straight on your sewing machine now you will have a lot of difficultly.
So what I’m going to do next is to open up one of the side seams on this pant leg,
just from here to here, because this will give me easy access to the cutout and make
it about 100 times easier to sew the plastic on.
When I’d done that, I made sure that the plastic was in place over the cutout, and
then I pinned it on around the edges, making sure that I’d only pinned it to the front
layer of the jeans, not the back, and then I sewed the plastic on using a straight stitch
like this.
Now, sewing with PVC plastic is a little bit difficult – it kept getting a little bit
stuck on my sewing machine’s feeding mechanism – but I didn’t need to use any special
sewing tools or sewing feet, I simply helped feed the fabrics through by pulling on it
a little bit, using my hands as I sewed.
Now once that plastic was sewn on around all 4 edges of the cutout, I sewed the side-seams
of the jeans back up and then I cut off the excess edges around the plastic, leaving about
half an inch next to the stitches that I just made.
Finally, I wanted to cover up the edges of the plastic so they wouldn’t dig into my
legs, so using those denim scraps that I cut out from the knees of these jeans earlier,
I cut these into strips, brushed some fabric glue on the edges of the plastic, and then
I placed the strip of fabric down over the plastic edge, covering it entirely.
And I did this at both the top and the bottom of the cutouts; I didn’t worry about the
sides because they weren’t ever going to touch my legs, but you could do this if you
wanted to.
Finally, remember that cute leg pocket that I cut off before?
I sewed the top of the pocket back in place – which would have been a lot easier if
I’d done this before I sewed the side seams back up, but I still managed to sew it on
using a needle and some thread – and then I was done!
So, how did it turn out?
How did I go?
[Electronic dance music plays]
Look, I did try really hard to film this seriously for you guys, but…
[singing]: Boop!
Boop boop boop boop boop boop boop! [laughs]
It's so hard to be serious filming these!
I mean, knees are really weird!
And they're just - they're just so THERE, like, WHAT ARE THEY DOING THERE?!
[Whispering]: What are knees?
Yeah, I think this episode has broken me.
A little bit.
It definitely initiated an existential crisis about the meaning of knees.
[Sound of knees slapping up against the plastic]
Seriously I’ve looked at my knees so much now, both filming and editing this video,
that I don’t really feel like they’re a normal body part anymore.
Alright so – it worked!
And…
I have to admit…
I actually quite like them.
Sure, there’s some definite cons – the main one being that they’re… really not
comfortable.
Whenever I bend my knees – like, every second while I'm walking – my knees bump up against
and stick to the rigid plastic.
I am literally sitting like this right now because I don't want the plastic to touch
my knees! [laughs] Also, on a hot day, your sweaty knees will
produce a lot of condensation that'll be very visible and show up on these windows.
I just thought of another one if you're someone who occasionally shaves their legs like I
do, you can't just forgo shaving in the winter if you're going to wear these!
Oh, I just thought of another one, if you're pale, like I am, you're going to have to put
sunscreen on your knees before you go out because this is not UV protective - unless
you want rectangle burn lines on your legs.
Man, so many of the clothes I make on Make Thrift Buy give you weird tan lines.
But there’s some pros, as well, like...
You can put stickers on them!
And change the stickers up!
You can also grab a whiteboard marker and write down things that you have to remember!
Your knees won't get wet in the rain...
They're certainly a conversation starter.
As if someone isn't going to mention these weird-ass jeans.
Also - fashion.
I guess that's a pro.
For some people.
Anyway, in conclusion, these jeans are a:
[scissor snipping, zipper sound effect]
Thrift a pair of jeans, and make these for yourself.
Mine came in at about $5 total if you include the plastic material and thread I used.
So I hope this video either helps, or amuses you, and I’ll see you all in my next video.
Bye!
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Bye!