ALL DONE!

Seriously!  MY. JEANS. ARE. ALL. DONE!

I haven’t had too much trouble finishing them off and I love the look and fit of the cotton lycra fabric.  I pieced them together with these patterns:  Vogue V2948 and  Vogue V8774, along with watching these Craftsy courses:  Angela Wolf’s Sewing Designer Jeans and Sandra Betzina’s Pant Fitting Techniques.  If you wish to see my previous steps for assembling my black denim Capris jeans and these blue denim jeans, check them out here, here, here, and here.

While making my jeans, I loved distressing the jeans fabric and applying jeans buttons and rivets.  So much so that I am now going to keep an eye out for jet black cotton lycra denim for my third pair of jeans!  

Please click on the first photo in my gallery to run “How to attach jeans buttons and rivets”…

First step: let’s move outside into the sunshine.

Get your tools ready: cork screw or a nail or even a Brad Awl (if you have one!), hammer, masking tape, wood, scrap denim, Jeans button kit and jeans rivet kit.

Use your hammer to tap your cork screw/nail/brad awl through your jeans layers (where you want the rivet to go), making sure you have your chunk of wood underneath.

Poke your rivet post through the hole.

Assemble your rivet gizmo according to your package directions.

Place your loaded rivet gizmo with the post going through your previously made hole, hold it closed and give it a few taps with your hammer (it took 4 or 5 for me). Pop your rivet gizmo open and TA DA!

If your rivet has to be applied far away from the edge of your jeans you can still use your rivet gizmo, just use it opened up. Poke the rivet post through the hole and load the rivet top into your gizmo, place it and then give it a few taps with your hammer. (Darn, I see a wobble in the topstitching!)

Applying the jeans button is the same technique. You can see the plastic gizmo is the same, but the attachments for it are larger. First: tap your cork screw/nail/brad awl a couple of times with your hammer to make a hole in your jeans where the button is to go.

Poke your jeans button post through the hole.

Place your loaded Jeans button gizmo on your jeans and tap with your hammer (took me about 7 or 8 taps to secure it properly).

Finished jeans button and jeans rivet!

Tip: I hammered really thick layers of my denim to be able to sew through all the layers. The masking tape helped to secure everything while I hammered away. Hammering also distresses your fabric, so if you don’t want it distressed there, hammer the wrong side.

Another tip: switch to screw top wine bottles after getting your cork screw hammered!

I was having such good luck, I decided to redo the jeans button on my black denim Capris pants.  That jeans button ended up being a little loose when finished so it was easy to work it off.  I lined the inside of the waistband in the small area where the button is to go with two layers of my heavier blue denim and reattached the button.  It held much better with the thicker layers.

By the time the job was finished the rain came quite heavily so I have more indoor photos (the lighting is so strange in the house) of the details on my finished blue denim jeans.

Since this fabric had some lycra stretch to it, I made this pair smaller than my black denim cotton Capris – I think I am going to make my next pair smaller again if I use a cotton lycra blend as these still seem a bit loose.  Also, I would like to make my next pair with large “tummy control” pockets 🙂 and slimmer pant legs.  I might even see if I can make this pair slimmer yet.

Now before I get too carried away with the celebration of a (finally) finished project, let me tell you the winner of last week’s Give Away!  I used a random number generator … (drum roll please) … the winner is Thimberlina!  Please email me your mailing address at imadeit362436 (at) gmail (dot) com.  Congratulations Thimberlina and Thank you everyone for playing along!

Happy Sewing!