No Sew Uses for Old Jeans

Old jeans are one item of clothing we all seem to have on hand. Often, they are worn out enough to be un-wearable, but there is still enough good fabric in them to make us reluctant to throw them away. Crafters and seamstresses have an endless variety of options for reusing old jeans, but reusing old jeans can seem daunting for those that are not talented with a needle and thread. Here are some no sew ideas for reusing old jeans around the house.

Tear the jeans into strips and use them to tie plants in the garden and yard. Fabric is better for tying bushes and trees since it won't cut into the bark the way that twine or wire can. Denim is a strong firm fabric with enough give to it that it's unlikely to snap under tension.

Cut the legs off the jeans, use a heavy duty rubber back to gather and close the cuff end, and fill the tube with a rolled up old towel or dry beans. Use another rubber band to tightly close the other end, and you've got a great buffer to put against the bottom of a door in order to keep the drafts from coming in along the floor.

Cut the denim that is still good from the jeans into squares with a pair of pinking shears. Depending on the size of the squares, they can be used for scrubbing around the house, kept in the garage for cleaning up greasy hands, and placed on the table as napkins. The first few times these are washed, there will be some extra lint and "fuzzies" produced from the fraying edges, but the pinked edges will stop this from being a problem after the initial "breaking in".

Use strips of the denim to mark fences, small trees or shrubs, posts, etc. Sometimes these things can be difficult to see while mowing the lawn, and having these little blue "flags" attached to things helps keep the operator from accidentally running into or mowing over them.

A very rudimentary bag can be made from a pair of old jeans by tying the ankles closed tightly. Then a rope can be threaded into the belt loops of the waist, to serve both as a handle and drawstring for the bag. These may look a little odd, but they're already sewn, generally very sturdy, and can hold quite a bit. The pockets that are already in place can be used to carry around smaller items that might be useful, like clippers or fabric strips for tying and marking.

Saving old jeans from the landfill by finding more uses for them after they're un-wearable is something that non-seamstresses can do as well with these no sew options for reusing them.