How to Customize Jeans

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Mitra Chester and I am at the Deluxe Resale Shop in Eugene, Oregon. And today I am going to show you some different techniques on how to customize your jeans. There are various ways to customize them. You can do slashes, various forms of wear. Holes with patches underneath, holes with patches over. Various types of fading in certain areas, and bleaching, whiskers and various types of different kind of marks and cuts on the edges and what not. You can also take in the leg, hem them up. And we are just going to go through real simple ways of doing all these. So the supplies you are going to need to do these effects today are some pins, sand paper. This is one eighty grade, some spare denim. Maybe an exacto knife, scissors a bleach pen and some chalk. It is very important when you are customizing your jeans that you put them on first; and have an idea of what effects you want to achieve and mark with some chalk while they are on you where you want those effects to be. With the whisker effect I think it is pretty important that you mark it on your body so the whiskers don't look really awkward and fake which they kind of do in this pair. So just kind of do some marks. Have in mind what you want. Mark it with the chalk. Take your pants off and first we are going to show you how to do this kind of just fading patch. So kind of this effect you can achieve in small areas with and exacto knife. By just scraping vertically the denim with a knife. You want to do this, so that will create some small areas. If you want a larger area like on the thigh or the knee you can use sandpaper. Basically by find an area and scruff it up and once you wash and dry this. Which is a very important step with all of these techniques it will show up a little more. But you can see how that will give you a kind of ruffed up kind of faded and worn in area. That is actually going to create this after it is washed and dried. And this exacto knife technique done vertically is going to create this. If you do it horizontally it is going to create more of a snagged exposing certain threads. So you are just going to scrape it across horizontally. Usually in one direction helps. You can also use scissors to do this or a pocket knife. Basically any kind of edge but it will start exposing certain threads. And basically achieve there you go after awhile. This type of look. With the holes. This is a hole, this is a slash. It is as simple as basically, you can also rip them. But it is pretty easy to just cut either a hole. So you want to just kind of, if you want a vertical slash. Start with a small. You can either just rip it or cut it with the scissors. Across like that. That actually ripped in both directions so it is easier to have more control with scissors. Or you can just mark a hole and cut within the perimeter of the hole. Because when you wash and dry them it is going to fray out a little bit. And if you want the hole this size you want to keep within the perimeter of that. And any kind of alteration you want to do to the leg, you want to try your jeans on inside out. Have someone pin them on you. Maybe taking them in or pin them up for a hem. And then sow along the pin line and cut off the access when you are done. Maybe zigzag stitch along the frayed edge. If you want the bleach line look you can basically take your bleach pen. If you want a crease down the front, you want to iron a crease that is going to be centered between your two side hems. So you are going to fold it like this, iron it. Take your bleach pen and basically apply a bead of bleach along that line. And then if you have your whisker effect, you marked it with a chalk. You are basically going copy over the chalk lines with a bleach pen. And you can make them a little more subtle or faded or precise. It kind of depends. But you basically use it just like a pen. And most bleach pens do need to be activated with some hot water. So you can either do this. Throw them right in the washing machine or spray it with some warm water before you actually do the effect. But hopefully it won't cover up the chalk marks. So those are the techniques you can use to customize your jeans."