These are perfectly good jeggings. (Spell check tells me “jeggings” is not a word, but we all know better, right?  It’s a terrible word, but a word nonetheless.)  And in fact, these jeggings are so perfectly good, that I might have a second back-up pair in storage.  I was just ready to change up the look a little bit.

I’ve never cut up such stretchy jeans before, so I really wasn’t sure what would happen. I started by putting them on to see exactly where I wanted the distressing to be, and then cutting 2 strips ever-so-slightly above the knee.

No turning back now!

I gently sanded them with a nail file until the edges started to fray.

The best part is when you get to pull the short frayed bits out.  If you pull them up or down – like shown in the picture – it leaves the longer threads going horizontally, giving that distressed look without a big gaping hole. I also posted a video on my Instagram if you want to see what I mean.  You can use tweezers, but these were easy enough that I just pulled them out with my fingernails.

The process was kind of therapeutic. I sat there and picked, picked, picked the little threads all the way across and Stevie had no idea I wasn’t paying attention to him for those 10 minutes. I just sat on the floor in his room while he played and talked a lot of jibber-jabber about cars, so he was none the wiser that I was completely distracted with other things.

I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. I was hoping it would look a little more… thready? Is that a word? (Spell check was ok with it.) But this super stretch material was tricky, so it’s good for what it is.  And now that I know what I’m doing, I can always go back and add more distressing later.

BONUS: with the stretchiness of these jeans, they don’t rip every time you bend down like regular jeans. What, what!  Bookmark this one for later gals!  And if you want to see how I styled these jeggings for Un-fancy, before I cut them up, go check out my guest post today!