Two years ago I recycled a pair of summer blue jeans with this technique called ribbon embroidery. Here you have some stitches, the most popular ones, for flowers, birds and all kind of accessories.
For those who know already how to stitch with ribbon it will be quite easy to read the pictures. For those who do not know the technique, I can tell you that stitching on a material like blue jeans it is not an easy task but with some effort, patient, and lot of strength I succeeded to end what I had in my mind.
Here is my link for what I have done last year:
http://www.iris-milkywaygalaxy.blogspot.com/2013/04/recycle-with-crochet-and-ribbon.html