How To Alter Your Jeans- 7 Quick Steps

On Sunday, I decided to de-oldify a pair of boot cut jeans by slimming the legs down 10 minutes before I was supposed to get ready for Mass.  Incredibly, the scheme totally worked out without me even crying or needing to use the seam ripper and I was able to rock a pretty sweet before/after picture here on ye olde bloggy.

And then at least 80 of you...okay, fine, four...four of you asked for more details on the quicky creation of new pants and I said "By Jove, I do believe I could pretend that it coincidentally required 7 steps so I can jam it into a 7 Quick Takes post!"

(1)

Grab a pair of jeans that fit nicely in the booty and waist regions but have big sloppy legs.  The awesome thing about doing this, bee-tee-dub, is that you basically end up with a custom pair of pants.  And if you start with a thrift store find ($3.99 thankyouverymuchGoodwill) it's, like, the sweetest deal evah.

Take a gander at the seams on the sides.  One side will look like this:

Most likely this will be on the inner leg seam and you will NOT mess with this at all.  Do not mess!

The other side, probably the outside seam, will look like this:

This is the one you'll be messing with.

(2)

Now turn your jeans inside out and fold the legs in half at the knee, matching up the two halves of the inner seam (or the seam you will NOT be messing with) like so:

Notice how there is a snazzy triangle of superfluous lower-leg fabric sticking out on the side?  Take any old pencil and draw a straight line from the hem to the knee-fold.

This is going to be your new outer-leg seam.

Make sure you do this to BOTH legs.  Unless you're making a clown costume.  In which case, do whachu want, girl.

(3)

Pop your jeans into your sewing machine and sew straight along that line you just drew, blending the part near the knee into the original seam. 

that red line is where you'll sew

Now do the other leg.  If you want.

(4)

Before you cut off the triangles of superfluous fabric, try them on to make sure it worked (it will).  If it did, just cut those chunks right off, leaving about a half inch of "safety-fabric" between your new seam and where you're cutting.

"chunks" and "triangles" mean this zone.  just in case.

(5).

Put your slimmy leg new pants on and roll under the extra length at the bottom until you have them stopping where you want them.  (You could skip this step, but I think you'll have a bunch of fabric pooling on top of your foot still and it'll look a bit of a mess.)  Slap a straight pin in there.

(6)

Take the pants back off (Hey, it's your house.  You don't have to wear pants to sew if you don't want too!), fold up the other side to match the first and sew yourself a new hem, leaving about a half inch between your stitch and the bottom of your jeans.

see where that pin is? that's where you'll sew.  all the way around.

Feel free to cut off the majority of the excess fabric AFTER you try them on, or you can be lazy like me and just leave all that extra fabric tucked up inside your pants.  Not kidding.

white scribbles represent excess fabric that you may or may not choose to remove

(7)

Done and done.  Schmancy-pants new jeans with skinny legs but not skinny booty ready to go.

Have fun!