diy: turning questionable thrift store jeans into cute shorts

I hate spending money. But I also love clothes, which is...unfortunate.

One of the ways I try to satisfy both my rational, save-money side and my buy-everything side is thrift stores. They're great places to find cute vintage stuff, but more often than not you have to dig through mountains of sequin sweaters and stained t-shirts to find anything good. And if you can't find things that are cute as-is, sometimes you just need a little creativity.

When I was last at Goodwill, I picked up a pair of black jeans. They were stained on the legs and I hated the cut, but I liked the rise and the feel of the fabric. So I decided I'd try to make them into shorts.

This is a pretty simple diy - even I managed to do it without messing it up. All you need are a pair of jeans, scissors, a ruler, and some chalk.

wow a before and after

1. Figure out where to cut.

To decide how short you want your shorts to be, it might be helpful to grab a pair you like and base the length off those. Once you've decided roughly how long you want your shorts to be, mark where you want to cut with your chalk. You may want to measure how far from the waist you made your first mark to make sure that you make even marks on both legs of the jeans.

Make sure you leave enough extra length to cuff the shorts, unless you like the unstitched hem look.

2. Cut.

Super simple. Just use some scissors to cut the jeans, following the lines you drew with your chalk. You'll end up with something that looks like this:

I made them longer than I really wanted because 1. I'm going to cuff the hem and 2. I didn't want to accidently make them too short. You can always cut off more if they're too long, but you can't really add length if they're too short.

3. Fold over the hem, and you're done!

Here are my finished shorts! Super cute and comfortable, and they only cost me six bucks and about five minutes of work.