New pants... sort of.

I'm so proud.

Both my mother and my grandmother are avid seamstresses, so I grew up making things all the time, too. I'm not very good with a sewing machine, then again, I compare myself to my mother, so I'm probably not nearly as bad as I think I am. In any case, I usually come across all sorts of issues while sewing and more often than not it irritates me to the point of throwing in the towel.

Not this time.

I successfully took in a pair of jeans. And it doesn't look half bad.

The jeans were cheap ones I purchased during a good sale at an inexpensive store (Takko). They didn't fit then, either, but I loved how super skinny the legs were, and decided for €15 I could live with wearing a belt. It turns out I couldn't. It drove me so crazy, I stopped wearing them. Or rather, I wore them last because inevitably I didn't get around to doing laundry until I was forced to wear my least-favorite jeans.

I have never sewn jeans before, unless you count making shorts out of them, so I scanned through a bunch of tutorials online on taking jeans in, and then promptly decided to do it my own way. See, most of the tutorials recommended taking in the back seam. Just playing around with it, I could tell that that was not the right route for me:

See all those nasty folds? I would have had to take apart all of the butt seams to smooth that out. Furthermore, I would have had to do all the fitting on my own butt. I can't even tell you how many tries it took me to take a picture of my own butt, and I doubt doing a fitting would have been easier. Plus, all of those seams are so visible. There's not much room for mistakes.

So I decided to take in the side seams instead. It meant I would have to add a seam to the waistband in order to take it in, but I wasn't too concerned about that.

See that little pucker on the side seam? I had to take in the pocket more than the rest of the leg. I'm not quite sure what the point is to having more matieral in the pocket than everywhere else, but I suppose I should just be glad I don't need the extra space...

One other thing you can see in the picture above is a rivet. I had to take out two of them to take the jeans in. Since I'm just a college student, I don't really have all that much in the way of tools, so I had to use a screwdriver to pry them off. I think I spent about 45 minutes on each rivet. It was a good workout.

Even though I was all gung-ho about my new project, I was able to control my enthusiasm and I only took apart one side at first, so I'd have the other side to look at while I was making my changes. It was a good move.

So, without futher ado, I present you my altered, and perfectly fitting jeans!

Here's the butt, without any messed up seams:

And here's a closeup of my handiwork on one side:

The thread I used for the topstitching is actually too thin, and it's also not quite the right color, but I figured there's only one other person in the world who's likely to look that closely, and that's my mother. And she'll probably shower me with compliments anyways because she's awesome.

Although you can't really tell the difference, here's a before and after comparison:

I know it kind of looks like the waistband is too tight, but it's not. What looks like a fold of fat is actually my hip bone.

I didn't take any pictures of the inside because it doesn't look very good, but I also zig-zag stitched the seam I took in to make it resemble the surged edge the manufacturer had. You can't see it in the closeup, but I also staggered the waistband seams to cut down on the amount of fabric in one place. It lies very flat, so I'm happy with that choice.

Considering what difficulties I have finding jeans that fit, this experience will probably change my way of jeans shopping. I would never alter expensive jeans (if I pay $75 for a pair of express jeans, they damn well better fit), but if I start running low on jeans, I might go ahead and buy a cheap pair that fit in the legs and just take them in. One thing I have to keep in mind, though, is that I can only do an easy alteration like this on hip-huggers. As my mother and I found out with a pair of waist-high dress pants, if you take in the waist to make it fit mine, you have to put in a longer fly because I can't get them over my hips otherwise.

Yay for fitting jeans!!