Braided Jeans Rug: Cutting Strips

Video Transcript

"To make our braided rug, we need long strips of material that we are going to braid together. So what you want to do is take a look at your jeans. If they don't have a lot of pockets; these are these are actually great for this project because they don't have back pockets and we can almost use the whole leg. You also want to think if you want, if you want it to be very variegated with lots of lumps and bumps. You can put the seams in but if you want it to be a smoother rug, then you are going to cut away from, you are going to take the seams off and cut away from the seams. So you will think about that. Now what you'll want to do is if you can cut these with a good pair of scissors. And just take, cut long long strips. Now you don't want to make the strips too long because then you'll get all tangled while you are braiding it. But you do want to, you don't want too short pieces because then you will have to, you'll have to keep joining. And joining makes it a little more lumpier. Okay. So the pieces should all be about 2 inches wide. And that also can vary. If you want like a thinner braid, you're going to do a lot more sewing to put it together. Then you can do a thinner strip. Or if you want more, a real fat chunky mat, then you can make your strips even wider. But I find about 1 1/2 to 2 inch strips is the best things. So to make long strips you, you're going to cut; and they don't have to be exact exact. You don't have to measure 2 inches. Just eye 1 1/2 to 2 inches. When you come to the end of your strip, you don't want to cut all the way through. Stop here. I am going to trim off this bulky hem. I don't want that. And I am going to trim a little bit of a corner here and then round it back up. And now, I am going to continue cutting straight down the leg again. All the way down the leg. And by coming around the corner and not cutting through, I end up with a much longer strip. Okay? Has a little bit of a bump here which is fine. And I will show you how to work that into your braid. But this way, you can take, especially if you have maybe some jeans that aren't so long or jeans that have a lot of pockets, you can work around it. You can still get long strips without. You can get long strips even out of a short piece of fabric. Okay. So I've come up here. I am going to just cut like a round in a circle like that and continue down the leg. And that gives me one continuous line of denim. Okay. Also, if you take a look at the weave, you can, at some point, you can rip. You just. You want to make sure that weave is going to take you where you want it to go. So cut if you want, if you are going to be going diagonal across the weave, then you should use the scissor. But if you see that going with the weave is going to bring you where you want, you can get a little different look. You get this raggedy edge. and I might just trim this off so it's a little even. So now I got a really nice long piece to braid with."