I am not wealthy, I have 4 kids and I can not afford to buy them expensive clothing. My son refuses to wear any bargain bin blue jeans no matter what the label on them says. After a lot of frustration at not being able to convince him to wear what he calls “cowboy jeans” I learned how to turn those cheap dark blue jeans into stonewashed denim that looks like it came from Abercrombie and Fitch and now I’m going to tell you how you can do it too.
Supplies
1 pair of super-duper cheap plain dark blue jeans
1 gallon bleach
5 pots of black sludge-like coffee
1 old, torn up, no good towel
1 old, torn up, no good tennis shoe
a couple of bricks or rocks
big bucket
1 piece of sandpaper, any grade
1 gallon vinegar
Lots of patience and time
Instructions
Before you decide to distress a pair of blue jeans make sure that you won’t ever want them again in case you make a mistake. If you don’t have any in your closet that you are willing to ruin, pick up a pair at your local Goodwill store for a couple of dollars. Same goes for the tennis shoe. This MUST be a tennis shoe and not a boot, golf shoe, bowling shoe or high heel.
Set your washing machine on a small load and allow it to fill up with HOT water. Add 3 cups of bleach to the hot water and allow it to spin for 1 minute. The spinning will mix the bleach into the water evenly so that you won’t have splotches on your jeans. Do not add laundry soap, just bleach.
Throw in the old towel, tennis shoe and pair of jeans. Allow these items to spin in the washer for 3 minutes. Turn off the washing machine and allow all items to soak in the washer in the bleach water overnight. The towel and tennis shoe are what gives your jeans that stonewashed look without actually putting stones in your washer. The more bleach you add and the longer you let them soak the lighter they will be. To determine how light you want them to be try soaking them in the bleach for a few hours at a time until you feel safe enough to soak them overnight. Soaking them overnight will make them very, very light colored no matter how dark they originally were.
The next morning allow the washing machine to finish going through all the cycles without doing anything extra to it and then remove items. Do not put the jeans in the dryer yet.
Pour one gallon of vinegar into a large bucket. I like to use one of those 5 gallon buckets that laundry soap comes in. Dunk the jeans in the vinegar and place rocks or bricks on top to help keep them from floating to the top. Allow jeans to sit in the vinegar for 2 days.
After two days wring jeans out with your hands and hang outside in the sun for 2 more days. It HAS to be sunny. Overcast skies won’t work.
Once the jeans are nice and crusty and dry, brew 5 pots of coffee. You will want the coffee to be as black and bitter and strong as you can get it. I found a canister of very old coffee hiding in the back of my cabinets. I didn’t bother to measure the scoops; I simply poured it into the basket and made coffee.
Dump the coffee into the same bucket you used for the vinegar but be sure you have dumped the vinegar out. Once you have 5 pots of coffee in the bucket add the jeans. Depending on how many cups of coffee your coffee maker brews increase or decrease the amount of pots until you have enough to completely soak a pair of jeans in. My coffee maker does 12 cups and I brewed 5 pots.
Again put the bricks or rocks on top of the jeans to keep them from floating to the top. Let the jeans sit in the coffee for one week. Go do other things and forget about them.
After one week hang the jeans to dry outside, in the sun for one day. Then put them in the washing machine along with the towel and tennis shoe and wash with laundry soap as normal.
Your jeans should now be a blue-ish-gray-brown color. To give them a destroyed look, dunk them back in the coffee and put them on. It will feel gross but it works. Go sit outside in your wet jeans and use the sandpaper to rough up the knees, butt, hems, pockets or any other areas where you want them to fray.
The repeated soaking in coffee, vinegar and bleach will weaken the threads of the denim allowing them to get that worn in feel and make distressing them with sandpaper easier.
