Tutorial: Tote bag for your groceries

Have you noticed how quickly jeans wear out?  It seems I’m always having to replace a pair of worn out jeans!  Claire of Pillar Box Blue shows how you can turn those worn out jeans into a door stop that’s shaped like a pear.  How’s that for turning something worn out into something useful for your home? 

The thing about worn out jeans is that the majority of the jeans legs will be still in good shape, but the knees or the inner thigh area will be worn to shreds.  I’ll absolutely patch my jeans to get more wear of them, but there’s only so many patch jobs you can do.  Then you’ve a pair of jeans that are past the point of being worn, but with enough useful fabric that it’s hard to just toss them in the trash.

This upcycled denim doorstop is such a great idea for using that fabric.  The pear shape is made from 4 pieces cut from the denim.  The piecing gives a wonderful curved pear shape.  The size and shape of the pattern pieces are perfect for cutting around damaged or shredded spots, too.  You can find the tutorial and free sewing pattern at Pillar Box Blue. 

The free pattern includes variations for two types of pears – a Conference pear which is a taller slimmer variety, and a Comice pear which is shorter and rounder. 

There are plenty of other upcycled denim sewing ideas over at Pillar Box Blue.  So after you make your pear doorstop, you can find other projects that would use up those scraps left over.  There’s an entire section of her blog dedicated to upcycled denim sewing ideas, so I’m sure you’ll find at least a couple (probably more!) of projects you can make from the pieces left over from making the doorstop.

Go to Pillar Box Blue for the upcycled denim pear doorstop.

[photo credit: Pillar Box Blue]