I have DIYed cutoff shorts and distressed jeans for myself many, many times so why not make a pair for my little? First things first: you have to find JUST the right pair of shorts or jeans. Which for little bitties was hard than I thought. The thing is they need to be actual denim, not faux denim fabric (which a lot of them are). You want think denim just like your jeans would be made out of. I found these Cherokee brand shorts at Target for $8! **Update I actually think they are boy’s shorts but still worked for my purpose 🙂
After you find the perfect denim bottoms you need your tools!
- scissors
- razor
- exato knife
- chalk
- ruler
I unrolled the shorts and put them on my wiggly one year old girl and marked approximately how long I wanted them to be with chalk. This is how I always did it when I made my own sooooo just made sense to do it that way for her too!
Chop the bottoms off
Now for the fun part!!! Ripping these things up! This step is totally up to you… the size of the holes, the amount of fraying, how much distressing, etc. Have fun and let your creative juices flow.
I used the exacto knife to make some holes on the front of the leg panels. VERY IMPORTANT: before you start slicing put a piece of cardboard or something similar in between the front and back pieces of the leg hole. You don’t want to cut through the back of your shorts. Using the exacto knife I cut slits in the denim
Then I started pulling the blue fibers of the denim out and leaving the white threads.
I repeated this step on both legs. On one leg I decided to break a few of the white thread to make it more of an open hole.
Still using the exacto knife I went around the shorts making small scratches on the surface of the fabric. So it looked like a hole was about to form there.
I used the razor along the edges of the pockets to make it look like they had been rubbed over time.
Repeated those steps on the back pockets
So this is what they looked like before I put them in the washing machine 🙂
ANNNNNDDDD this is what they look like after taking a spin in the washer and dryer!! I LOVE them!!! I mean come on how cute are these!?!