Denim Bag From Old Jeans

Using a pair of old jeans and various scraps of material I made a new shoulder bag. I've called it a memory bag as it used old outgrown clothes belonging to my children.

First I cut the top off a pair of jeans, I went to just below the crotch but you could go higher or lower depending on the size bag you want. Also I'm fairly big so my jeans were a big size - if you are smaller and wanted bigger you could sew together two sections of jeans. I like the fact that I still have pockets from the jeans on the outside of my bag and use them for keys etc.

Inside out I sewed up the jeans to create the bag shape and then made a lining from a child's t shirt sewed along the neck hole and sleeve holes. I then sewed this into the bag.

The shoulder strap is a strip cut from the leg of the jeans sewn to make a tube and then stitched into the waistband - you could just knot it through the belt loops to create interest.

The decorations are a variety of things - the daisy is made from an old vest (petals), old T shirt (stalk) and yellow scoobidoo sprialled up for the middle. The pink heart is a bit of my daughters outgrown pink jeans, the blue star uses some material from my son's outgrown shorts, the cloud and rainbow and the square thing are made of scraps of material and beds etc I had lying around.

I'm pretty untidy at sewing so instead of trying to make it all tidy and neat I tried to make a feature of my uneven stitch sizes and rough cutting out. I love it :)