Don’t Toss Ripped Jeans, Make This DIY Denim Dress Instead

If you’ve got some ripped men’s jeans that you think are unwearable, don’t toss them. I’ll show you how to turn them into something you can actually wear.

We’ll start with a top, and add a DIY repurposed denim skirt to make a unique dress.

It’s completely beginner friendly and needs no special equipment apart from a basic sewing machine.

Tools and materials: 

• 2 or 3 pairs of damaged jeans
• Seam ripper (optional)
• Pins
• Scissors
• Pinking shears (optional)
• Iron
• Sewing machine

1. Prepare the jeans

You’ll need at least one pair of jeans that are too large for you, because they’ll need to fit around your upper body.

I picked the largest of the three pairs I had to become the top. They were also the thinnest fabric of the three, which made them even more perfect.

2. Cut and fit the top

The first thing I did was remove all the tags from the jeans.

I needed to know if the largest pair would fit around my torso, so I turned them inside out and cut a small neck opening from the crotch area.

Before going any further, I tried them on by putting my head through the hole I’d cut and pushing my arms into the sleeves.

Fortunately, the waist to hip section of the jeans fitted around my chest and shoulders, although the sleeves would need shortening.

I cut out a larger, more comfortable neckline, placing the two legs together so it would be even.

To shorten the sleeves, I used a loose-fitting sweatshirt as a template. I folded it in half lengthways and placed the collar of the sweatshirt to the neckline of my top.

I cut the legs of the jeans to the length of the sweatshirt sleeves, adding an extra centimeter or two for the hem.

As the pockets were so large, I stitched them closed and cut off the excess fabric.

There was still too much bulkiness in the underarm area and in the width of the sleeves. 

I tapered the sleeve seam from just below the pockets to the hem, tried it on again and then trimmed the other side to match.

I like to use pinking shears on denim to help prevent fraying.

I put the top to one side, because I wanted to use trimmings from the other jeans to finish the neckline.

3. DIY denim skirt tiers

I started by chopping the legs of my remaining two pairs of jeans.

Because I have four legs and each leg has two layers of denim, I’m aiming to make at least four tiers out of them.

I cut off all the hems and chopped out the thick side seams.

I evened up the edges of each piece and then sewed one end of each pair together, to make four long strips, which would be my tiers.

4. Top tier

I decided to use the widest piece for the top tier. I stitched the other open ends together to make a tube of fabric.

I placed my top right side out on a flat surface.

I turned the fabric for my top tier wrong side out and placed it around the top so the right sides were together. I lined up the seams of the tier with the side seams of the top and pinned them in place.

I gathered the tier onto the band of the top using pin tucks and stitched them in place.

Because the dark denim frays easily and has a white backing, I decided to make the most of it.

I pinned the tiers together with the wrong sides facing, so the frayed seams were on the outside.

I adjusted the length of each tier using pin tucks as before, and then stitched them together.

I think these seams are going to look fantastic once the skirt has been washed and the edges have frayed more.

6. Sleeve hems and neckline

I folded the ends of the sleeve under, pressed them and sewed a simple hem.

To edge the neckline, I cut a long bias strip from the scraps of the other jeans.

I pressed the long edges to the wrong side along the length of the strip.

I stitched the strip right sides together to the outside of the neck edge first, then folded the strip over the raw edge and sewed it down on the inside, binding the neckline neatly.