These were a HIT the other night and I wanted to show you how I did this! A few simple steps with a few simple items and off we go to cute jean city!
1. Gather your supplies
– pair of jeans (ideally with looser legs you can gather, but you could do a variation on skinny jeans, too, or on the sleeves of a jacket)
– safety pins (8 larger, 4 small)
– ribbon (I used 35” per side for this, and personally think a bold ribbon is a fun option. But you can definitely go with a thinner, more subtle choice.)
2. Decide whereabouts you’d want the ribbons to hang on your jeans (and how long you want the ribbon tails to be) so you can cut the ribbon and place the safety pins. You can easily do a test by tying a ribbon and holding it up to your jeans before placing all of the pins and tying your final bow
3. Once the location has been determined, you’re going to put your safety pins in place, from the inside, so it’s less obvious. Note, I pin one facing up and one facing down, just so any outside pull from the ribbons has less of a chance of knocking one loose.
4. Turn the pants right side out again and thread the ribbon through the safety pins so it’s anchored in place.
5. Tie a bow (video here) and fiddle with it until it’s the size you want, making sure that the “bow” portion is flat and not twisted.
6. Pin down the back side of the bow to the pant legs (from the inside again, so it’s not obvious) so the bow remains in place even as you’re moving around. This keeps it from going cattywampus.
As a finishing touch, I like to trim the bottom of the ribbons so it’s a smooth edge with a point instead of straight across. This allows it to fall with a bit more grace and not need to match the bottom of the pant legs perfectly.
TA DA!
