Denim craft pinny

Do you have a pair of old jeans that are too worn out to wear any more? Don't throw them out – instead, upcycle them into Corinne Bradd's handy apron and decorate it with all those pretty offcuts of fabric prints hiding in your stash. Not only will you earn yourself some eco brownie points, you'll never have to stop in the middle of a project to find the right tool, thanks to all the pockets where you can stash what you need. Win-win!

Essentials

Old pair of jeans
Assorted cotton prints
Webbing tape, 1.5m

Dimensions List

Size: custom-sized

Stitch an apron

1 Take an old pair of jeans and cut across them at the crotch to remove the legs, then snip away the front to leave the back part with the pockets still attached. Press the panel and flatten the curve of the bottom, slip stitching a pleat on the inside if necessary. Round off the two bottom corners.

2 Make pockets from denim offcuts, folding over a cuff at the top and adding strips of patterned fabric across the width. Turn in 1cm along the three sides of the pocket, pin, and topstitch to the pinny. Overlap existing pockets by machine stitching the new pocket onto the pinafore as far as possible, hand-stitching the rest.

3 Affix a large safety pin to one end of the webbing tape to guide it through the waistband of your jeans. Even up the ends of the tape and secure in the waistband with a few stitches.

4 Cut several 8cm wide strips of fabric and join end-to-end to make a piece that is twice as long as the three bottom edges of the pinny. Fold in half along the length, wrong sides together, and zigzag stitch the raw edges together. Pin it to the edges of the apron, then pleat the strip every few centimetres and stitch in place, with the raw edges matching. Fold out the frill, press, then topstitch the raw edge to the pinny.