I always felt guilty when discarding old pair of jeans. While t-shirts and cotton shirts make good rugs to apply wood stains and wax, jeans are too rough and not absorbent. I didn’t know what to do with them.
Thanks to the Internet, I found out that there were many others who thought of utilizing this tough material before me. To be fair, crocheting from old jeans is not my original idea.
People cut jeans in strips, and crochet with a large hook. But I didn’t like fraying jeans fabric at all. So I fold the strips in gate fold, ironed, and sewn like a bias tape. The strips of jeans became very strong and sturdy rope like material. At this point, it didn’t look like someone’s old jeans any longer. But I realized that It’s a pretty labor intensive process. No wonder online folks didn’t do it in this way.
The finished crocheted baskets looked great. They are sturdy, machine washable, and tumble dry OK, just like a pair of jeans. Each basket is made of long jeans ropes, so that you can unravel and crochet it again, if you like.