Saturday 22 June 2013

DIY - UNISEX LEVIS SHORTS FOR UNDER £5

Obviously it's the time of year when the weather starts to get that little bit nicer and it's time to get the summer clothes out. 
I've always wanted a pair of denim shorts but I refuse to pay £30 for a pair from Topman or Urban Outfitters, because of this I've decided to put together a little tutorial on making your very own pair of Levis denim shorts!

What you need -
- Levis denim jeans (They don't have to be Levis, or even denim, you can always grab an old pair of trousers that you won't wear again)
- Ruler 
- Scissors
- Pen / Fabric Pencil 

To start with you need to gather your materials, I managed to pick my jeans up in a charity shop for £4.99, looking in charity shops is normally the best thing to do if you're wanting to do this. You can easily grab a size that fits you and if you're wanting to experiment with bleaching or even try this out on a pair of jeans that you don't like as much in case you make a mistake, you wont waste too much money.



You now need to lie your jeans on a flat surface so that you can measure the inner and outer leg to make sure both sides match up. This is where you'll decide how you want your shorts to look, mark each side till you're happy. To help with this I used an old pair of shorts to get the rough length that I like then added a few more centre meters as I wanted to turn the bottoms up a little bit.

I normally put the jeans together to check that the straight lines join together before cutting along them, I wouldn't worry too much about this if you're turning the bottoms up or even distressing them slightly, only if you were thinking of leaving the harsher edge.


And there we go, a pair of Levis denim shorts! I would recommend adding a stitch or two in the inner and outer leg if you're going to be turning the bottoms up like me just to keep everything in place, but that's totally optional and you can tweak or change anything you like, the length, distressing, bleaching or even stitching onto them.



Hope you found this post helpful and I've added a before and after photo above incase it will help anyone. 
I managed to take the last photos using my remote shutter for my camera so hopefully once I get used to it a bit more I can start to post on lookbook, fingers crossed. It'll be a challenge to not get my cat in every photo though as you can see him peeking through in the background a few times!

6 comments:

  1. They look great! I did this with a pair of old topman jeans last year.. So much cheaper.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, yeah it definitely saves a bit of money!

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  2. Nice job! :)

    xx
    Tatiana
    http://tatiana-kurnosova.blogspot.com/

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  3. I love doing this to old clothes, it's so much better than just throwing them out! You did such a good job - amazing! Now following! :)
    Rachael x
    Rachaeleeno | Beauty, Fashion & Thoughts

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