Baby Bibs from Old Jeans

A few weeks ago, my husband gave me a stack of his old jeans.  The jeans that had gone from being worn in every day life, to being worn only while working outside, to being totally unwearable.  Of course, the biggest issues were the holes in the knees.  I can totally work around holes in the knees!

The first pair of jeans was a great, dark colour.  I particularly liked these jeans because of the colour, but also because these are jeans my husband was wearing when we were first dating and they make his butt look good! 

I found a great pattern on Craftstylish and off I went.  I used jean on the front of most bibs, with cotton or terry cloth on the back.  A few have jean backs.  I still have some bibs cut out (and not yet sewn), but since I am having a slow craft week (I'll blame it on the pinched nerve in my neck ~ Ouch!), I thought I'd go ahead and share.  If you cut thoughtfully and use some different fabrics for the back of the bibs you should be able to get 6-7 bibs out of one pair of small mens jeans.

If I were to make this pattern again, I would make the bib a little larger, especially the top piece.  I feel it needs a little extra length.  I would also make the patterned fabric strip a little wider.  I also recommend top stitching the stripe before sewing the back and front of the bib together since things didn't always line up perfectly. 

My friend used to use terry cloth bibs when her baby was very young and very drooly so I thought I would make some bibs that could double as drool catchers.  The blue terry cloth didn't have a backing and was very stretchy.  It ended up being very hard to work with, especially since the jeans are quite thick in comparison (back center).

I used my Cloud9 Fabrics and was able to use some leftover scraps in the patchwork bib (front right).  I love the option of using small scraps up!

A few more photos:

The white terry cloth had sort of a flannel like backing.  It wasn't nearly as stretchy as the blue terry cloth.

This is the patchwork bib.  The circles are from the neck hole of the bibs.

All the bibs stay closed with a small snap that I had on hand.