31 Days: Color – Day 17: Blue Water and Blue Jeans

For a few years when we were in college, Husband’s parents lived in Miami. What a treat it was to be able to travel down for Fall Breaks, Christmas, and Summer vacation, to leave cold and sometimes snow behind in Tennessee and spend a week with my toes in the ocean or by the pool. We have great memories of those trips (as evidenced by that time I tried to be a scrapbooker):

My project today makes me think about those trips. One time, when we were flying out of Nashville to Miami, I was in the check-in line behind a woman wearing the coolest skirt I had ever seen. It appeared to be handmade, a pair of deconstructed jeans that had been put back together as a skirt with the legs sewn together in the front and with a triangle of tribal-print fabric filling in the gap in the back (similar to this skirt, but reversed). I stared at the skirt, and even got up the nerve to talk to a stranger (hey, I was 19) to tell her I thought her skirt was cool. As soon as we sat down in the terminal, I sketched it out in my journal in hopes of recreating its coolness one day.

When I saw these overall shorts, I thought I could try it out. I seam-ripped the hem open and the legs apart to open the overalls up into a dress.

Then I cut the seam even farther up to make the fabric of one leg properly lay over the other leg. I did this in the front and the back. Because these were shorts, there was no gap in the legs that needed additional fabric. Guess I’ll still need to try that out with a pair of long jeans one day.

I pinned the flap on the other side and sewed, first following the the original tan stitching and then sewing down the raw edge.

I like the look of the frayed edges and striations from the unfolded hem.

If ever a dress needed a pair of cowgirl boots, it’s this one. I’ve been searching Goodwill this month (October is thrifting gold) but haven’t found anything in my size yet.