I didn't actually sew these jeans from scratch. I feel obliged to tell you that. One pair is from Banana Republic, and the other pair is from Express. What I did was make basically unwearable items into super cute, perfectly fitting jeans. Sadly, I don't have before pictures, but they looked kind of like this:
And now, they look like this:
And this:
No more gape! One pair of perfectly hemmed short jeans for flats and long jeans for heels! Yay! So how did I work this miracle, you ask? You would. ;) I found a tutorial through sewing.craftgossip.com that shows you how. Basically, you rip out the waistband seams, cut out however much you need to in the center of the waistband, put a couple of darts in above the pockets (like below),
...then you stitch the whole thing together again, and you end up with this:
I took two inches out of each waistband and two more inches off the hem of my "skinny" jeans (the ones I'm wearing with gray flats...those are about as skinny as it's going to get around here). I hand-stitched the topstitching, because I wasn't super confident about my sewing-two-perfectly-straight-parallel-lines skills with the machine, but the darts, the center seam, and the hem were done by machine.
These are the first pairs of jeans I've ever had that fit properly, and I'm super excited about it. I couldn't manage to get the back beltloops back on prettily, so I just tossed them both, and I don't really care, because my shirts always cover the waistbands of my jeans anyway.
Just skating in with a February post. I hope you all had a wonderful short month and are looking forward to March and maybe some spring weather (or fall, for those of you in the southern hemisphere)!
Well done, what a satisfying project. I tried adjusting a pair of black gap trousers last year and made a hige mess of them - will have to bookmark that tutorial!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I always obsessivly search out tutorials before I do anything, because I'm such a perfectionist, and I feel like I'm still a beginner! I do wish that one had pictures, although the text is very thorough. If I buy another pair of jeans, I'll probably take some photos of the alteration process so there's a photo tutorial on the web.
ReplyDeleteGreat alterations! I have 3 pairs of jeans that i like the fit of (from gap and banana republic). i tried jeans at a few places the other day and none of them fit right! maybe there's some altering in my future. i was considering trying to make some from scratch, but i'm not sure if i'm ready for that yet!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm definitely not ready for making jeans from scratch! I bought Kenneth King's Jean-ius class on Craftsy, and I've watched a bit of it, but I think I'll put that off a little longer. :) You could totally do the alterations, though! It's easy, and it's pretty quick. It took me about two hours per pair, and that was with mostly hand sewing.
DeleteGood job and yay for the great-fitting jeans! :)
ReplyDelete