There are many ways to distress your jeans including stone washing, sanding, bleaching and grinding. This section of this site is devoted to exploring how to implement or mimic these methods at home.
Stone Washing
"Stone washing is a textiles manufacturing process typically utilized by the fashion industry, in order to give a newly-assembled cloth garment a worn-out appearance. Stone-washing also helps to increase the softness and flexibility of otherwise stiff and rigid fabrics such as canvas and denim.
The process does literally use large stones to roughen up the fabric being processed. The garments are placed in a large horizontal industrial clothes washer that is also filled with large rocks. As the wash cylinder rotates, the cloth fibers are repeatedly pounded and beaten as the tumbling stones ride up the paddles inside the drum and fall back down onto the fabric."
-wikipedia.org
I've read that river rocks are sometimes used for stone washing, but pumice stones are the most common. Since stone washing jeans with stones actually wears and weakens the fabric many manufacturers use enzymes to synthesize the look of stone washing.
Since it is difficult to purchase and use specialized enzymes for stone washing at home then washing with real stones is what we are left with.
Stone washing requires a front loading washer, otherwise the stones will just sink to the bottom and not do much to the clothes. However, stone washing can and probably will damage your standard washer. So I've thought up a simple alternative. I haven't tried it yet, but I don't see why it wouldn't work (see Method 1).
Method 1
Basically make a rock tumbler and throw your jeans inside--Get a large 5 gallon bucket with a water tight lid (the kind they use for food storage and laundry soap should work) and cover the bottom in pumice stones. If you don't have pumice stones you can use any kind of rough rocks. Lava rocks look about the same as pumice, so they might work, but they might give your jeans a red tint). Fill the bucket about 1/3 full of salt water and put the jeans in. Make sure the jeans are covered in the salt water, put the lid on tight and let them soak for about 1/2 hour (I'm not sure what this does, but I've heard from a lot of sites that it helps).
After they soak roll the bucket around on the floor or sidewalk for about 15 to 30 minutes (depending on how worn you want them.
Open the lid and check the jeans to see if they look how you want them too, if so rinse them off well and wash them in your regular washer.
Method 2
This isn't really stone washing, but I hear it produces a similar look--Soak the jeans in salt water for a couple of hours and let them dry in the sun. When they are thoroughly dry sand them with some sand paper where you want them to look stonewashed.
Method 3
Wear your jeans into the ocean then take them off and bang them against the rocks on the shore. I read on a website that a famous musician did this to make her jeans look stylishly stonewashed. It's really the same basic idea of standard stone washing with a little poetic drama added to the mix.
Try these methods out let me know how they worked for you, and I'll update this site accordingly.
