Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial

Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial by Underground Crafter | These fragrant sachets will brighten up your drawers or make great gifts! Find a new life for your old jeans with this easy, low-sew tutorial.

I’ve mentioned before that I have a stack of old jeans in my closet. (I know I’m not the only one, either.) I’m forever looking for crafty ideas to use up some denim, and I have found my new favorite.

This post contains affiliate links. This post is sponsored by Cricut but all opinions and thoughts are my own. Additional materials for this project were generously provided by Fiskars.

When Fiskars sent me the 45 mm Easy Change Ergo Control Rotary Cutter to try out, I knew it would be perfect for chopping that pile of jeans up. You can definitely use scissors when cutting denim, but edges will be fraying all over the place. A good rotary cutter will attack that jeans pile with surgical precision so you can leave the pieces in a stack indefinitely as they await their new life in a future craft project.

Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial by Underground Crafter | These fragrant sachets will brighten up your drawers or make great gifts! Find a new life for your old jeans with this easy, low-sew tutorial.These lavender sachets are great for freshening up your drawers and they make wonderful gifts, too. If you can’t get lavender at your local Farmers Market, you can substitute handmade or store-bought potpourri. (Similarly, if for some strange reason, you don’t have a stack of old jeans in your closet, you can substitute cotton fabric for the denim.)

I made this sachet for my sister, who was recently married (hence the ironed-on phrase). You can customize yours appropriately, too, or, if you want to make a batch to store in your handmade gift closet, you can leave them blank.

If you make your own Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachet, I’d love to see it! Share your progress and questions by tagging me on Facebook as @Underground Crafter, Instragram as @ucrafter, or Twitter as @ucrafter. Sign up for my weekly newsletter and get a coupon code for your choice of one of my premium patterns and other subscriber goodies. Plus, you’ll never miss one of my crafty tutorials or free patterns again!

Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachet

Tutorial by Underground Crafter

Materials

Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial by Underground Crafter | These fragrant sachets will brighten up your drawers or make great gifts! Find a new life for your old jeans with this easy, low-sew tutorial.

Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial by Underground Crafter | These fragrant sachets will brighten up your drawers or make great gifts! Find a new life for your old jeans with this easy, low-sew tutorial.

  • Dried lavender or potpourri. I used Lavender by the Bay’s loose dried French lavender for crafting that I bought at my local Farmers Market. It’s so fragrant! One 8 ounce bag would make three to five sachets, depending on how much you stuff each one.
  • A sewing machine or sturdy, hand sewing needle (to work through the denim) with cotton thread.
  • A small amount of Coats transparent polyester thread with a sturdy, hand sewing needle (for closing up the last part of the sachet).
  • Clover Mini Iron, or standard sized iron.
  • Ironing board or other iron-safe surface.
  • Spoon.

Instructions

Prepare the fabric

  • Lay the jeans out on your cutting mat. With your rotary cutter and acrylic ruler, trim the bottom hem, side seams, and pockets off of one leg of the jeans. Unfold the leg into a long strip.

Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial by Underground Crafter | These fragrant sachets will brighten up your drawers or make great gifts! Find a new life for your old jeans with this easy, low-sew tutorial.

  • Cut the leg into 6″ (15 cm) squares. I maximized the available squares on my jeans by cutting around areas that were very worn or had tears or holes, so I frequently cut against the grain. This just makes the resulting pile of denim squares look more interesting!

Customize and adhere glitter iron-on

  • Trim the Cricut Glitter Iron-on to 4″ (10 cm) across using the Cricut Gold Tools and Trimmer Set or a pair of scissors.
  • Use Cricut Design Space to customize the words or images for your iron-on. I used one of the free fonts, A Frightful Affair, and sized the phrase so that it would measure about 3″ (7.5 cm) wide. Your finished sachet will measure about 5″ (13 cm), so be sure that your final iron-on image leaves you an inch or so on each side of the fabric piece to work with.

Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial by Underground Crafter | These fragrant sachets will brighten up your drawers or make great gifts! Find a new life for your old jeans with this easy, low-sew tutorial.

  • To cut the Glitter Iron-on, set your machine’s materials dial to Iron On. Don’t forget to click the check box for “Mirror Image (for iron-on)” before cutting. Place the iron-on on your cutting mat with the shiny side down and the clear backing side up and cut.
  • Use the Cricut Tools Weeder to remove the space around your words or image.
  • Position iron-on at the center of a piece of denim with the clear backing facing up and the iron-on touching the denim. (Letters and images should look right side up as in the image below at right.)

Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial by Underground Crafter | These fragrant sachets will brighten up your drawers or make great gifts! Find a new life for your old jeans with this easy, low-sew tutorial.

  • Using your Clover Mini Iron, press firmly on the clear backing sheet following the iron-on instructions until the letters are firmly attached. Allow to cool completely before removing the clear backing sheet.

Assemble the sachet

  • Place two fabric squares together with right sides facing. Using your sewing machine or sturdy hand sewing needle, sew three sides completely closed. I used a 1/2″ (1 cm) seam allowance. Since you will be stuffing the sachet, be sure to back stitch to make the seams more durable.
  • Sew the last side about half closed. Trim the thread tails so they don’t snag on the stuffing.
  • Turn the sachet right side out. With the spoon, stuff the dried lavender inside, pausing frequently to shake and allow the lavender to settle. For your own sanity, do not overstuff!

Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial by Underground Crafter | These fragrant sachets will brighten up your drawers or make great gifts! Find a new life for your old jeans with this easy, low-sew tutorial.

  • Once the sachet is full enough, use the Coats transparent polyester thread and a sturdy hand sewing needle to sew the last seam closed. Start with the thread knot on the inside of the sachet so it will be hidden. Then fold the raw edges towards the inside so the seam allowance will be similar to the rest of your sachet. Sew along the edge. Back stitch to finish and then draw the needle through the inside of the sachet. Trim the thread on the outer edge so the thread tail recedes into the sachet.
Upcycled Denim Lavender Sachets tutorial by Underground Crafter | These fragrant sachets will brighten up your drawers or make great gifts! Find a new life for your old jeans with this easy, low-sew tutorial.© 2017 by Marie Segares (Underground Crafter). This tutorial is for personal use only. You may use the tutorial to make unlimited items for yourself, for charity, or to give as gifts. You may sell items you personally make by hand from this tutorial. Do not violate Marie’s copyright by distributing this tutorial or the photos in any form, including but not limited to scanning, photocopying, emailing, or posting on a website or internet discussion group. If you want to share the tutorial, point your friends to this link: http://undergroundcrafter.com/2017/01/02/upcycled-denim-lavender-sachets-tutorial. Thanks for supporting indie bloggers!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

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