I love keeping up with the new trends in fashion. However, my current college girl lifestyle can’t fund my love for clothing. The latest trend I’ve been seeing all over campus is the frayed hem look. I looked online for jeans with this style and was astounded at how expensive they could be!! I decided to try to recreate this look at home on a pair of jeans I already owned so I could join in on this trend for a fraction of the cost. This DIY is super easy to do so I highly recommend trying this on an old pair of jeans before dropping $100+ on a designer brand.
Here’s what my DIY fray hem jeans looked like before:
Step 1: Cut off the hem
Since my jeans were already a little short on me, I just cut my hem off at the lowest point possible. If you want to make your jeans a little shorter, go ahead and make a higher cut to get the jeans to your desired length. I would start with a low cut and slowly creep up so you don’t accidentally cut too much off.
Step 2: Mark the beginning of your fringe
I wanted my fringe to be a little on the dramatic side so I marked my jeans roughly an inch from the bottom.
Step 3: Cut the bottom onto strips
This step in no way has to be perfect, the biggest thing is to just try to make close to the same height. The width of the strips doesn’t really matter, but I’d recommend making them no wider than about a centimeter because then the next step will be harder.
Step 4: Pull horizontal strings out
This is the most TEDIOUS part of the process. To get the frayed effect, you have to pull out all of the white threads running horizontally across your jeans. After doing it for a little while, this is the method that I found works fastest:
After you’ve pulled a few white threads out from the bottom, grab the blue threads sticking out and pull them away from the middle of your strip and out through the sides.
With fewer blue threads holding the horizontal threads in place, they’ll be easier to remove and to pull out more than one at a time. You can either grab and pull the white threads from the side, or, if you have sharp, pointy tweezers you can go in through the middle.
As for the hems running down the sides of the legs, I left that part alone. I figured it would keep the jeans more intact without compromising the look.
After this step, you’re done!! If you want, you can also toss these in the dryer before wearing them to bring out a little more fray. I really like how mine turned out and I hope you love your results too!