Spice up your jeans with couching stitch

Do you feel that your jeans are too boring and ubiquitous for your personal style? If yes, then try to jazz up an old pair of jeans by stitching a curved band at the bottom of each leg. See how you can do couching stitch.  

Materials & tools:

• Knitting yarn (two colors).
• Cotton thread (two colors).
• Scissors.
• A pair of jeans

Instructions:

1. Use tailor's chalk or other fabric marking tool to draw at the bottom of the jeans' leg a curved line. Draw the curve around the leg and on both sides.

2. You'll use couching stitches to stitch the curve. So you need two needles and two threads. The knitting yarn will be the laying thread while the cotton thread will be the tying thread. Bring the needle with the laying thread (purple knitting yarn) from back to front through point (a). Draw the second needle with the tying thread (yellow cotton thread) just a few milimeters to the right, and bring it from back to front through point (1). You can work either from left to right or from right to left. 

3. Align the laying thread to the design line.

4. Cross the tying thread over the top of the laying thread and bring the needle to the back through point (2) securing the laying thread to the fabric.  

5. Bring the needle with the tying thread to the front, through point (3).

6. Bring the needle to the back through point (4).
Continue in this manner until you finish the whole curve. As you go, keep the laying thread taut.

7. To finish the couching stitch, bring the needle with the knitting yarn from front to back through the same point you started. Stitch another satin stitch with the second needle. To secure the threads withour knot, turn the fabric upside down with the underside facing up and pass both needles below a few previous stitches. Cut with scissors.

8. With tailor's chalk draw one more curve below the previous. Use the same technique (couching stitch) and same yarn and thread to stitch the second curve.

9. Enrich the pattern, drawing and stitching more curves.

10. Lets fill the gap between the curves with a zig zag pattern. Select laying thread and tying thread of different colors and start by bringing the needles from back to front. Align the laying thread to make a zigzag pattern. Cross the tying thread over the top of the laying thread, securing the laying thread to the fabric. 

11. Continue stitching in this manner around the leg until you finish the zig zag pattern.

Your jeans is ready. You can either embellish one or both legs.