not skinny enough

I have passed up a lot of jeans with interesting finishes because the legs just weren’t skinny enough. My ideal is a 10″ – 12″ opening at the ankle. (10″ is what is pictured below on the right… just enough to squeeze my foot through.)

A skinny jean, a straight leg does not make. Being just a bit wider than you would like makes them look horrible with ankle boots or the heavy platforms. You want your skinnies to be tight against your ankle to look current, like leggings. (I’m not saying a wider leg doesn’t look swell with other types of shoes… I’m just talking about a very specific trend here.)

I hadn’t been in Kohls in almost a year and had to pop in last week for a certain heavy sweatshirt my dad loves. The lines were weaving across the store so, I figured I’d make the trip worth my while and see what they had. Well, they had dark rinse and pale grey skinny jeans on sale for $13! I tried them on and the 13.5″ leg opening just wasn’t going to work with anything but sneakers. At that price, I got them anyhow. When I got home I was thinking that there was absolutely no reason why I couldn’t take them in myself!

I slept on it and devised a plan of action. I really should’ve taken some decent tutorial pictures but as long as you have a sewing machine (or not and are a glutton for time-consuming work) I think you will figure out what I’m saying here. It couldn’t be more easy.

• First off, wash your jeans and dry them as you normally would. (Before you alter anything, you have to pre-shrink!)
• Okay, now look at your jeans. (You really need to keep this in mind BEFORE you even buy a pair that you intend to alter.) Most of the jeans on earth have two different seams on each leg. The front and back pieces are sewn together at the sides. One side seam is also usually different than the other. One will have the top stitching detail (shown in the pic below) and the other wont. The sides of each leg that don’t have the top stitching are the sides you will be taking in since it’s just a simple easy seam and that’s the kind I like… simple… and easy…
• If you are happy with the length of the  jeans and don’t plan on hemming them then you can take a seam ripper and remove the hem stitch a couple inches away from each side of the simple seam I just told you about. (This will keep you from having to seam-rip and re-hem each leg entirely. I AM SO LAZY!) So, you got that? You need to un-hem the bottoms of each leg half-way so you can flip your jeans inside out and have enough room to flatten them out to sew.
• The thighs of jeans are usually tight enough for me (but if you need to take the thighs in too, just sew past your knees). Put your jeans on inside out and with white tailors chalk (or use a safety pin), mark where your jeans begin to get tight (around your knees usually) and then mark how much room you need to get your feet through, holding them as if they were already altered and practicing getting them on and off. You can just do this on one leg and then when you take them off, fold the pair in half and match the marks onto the other leg.
• Now, take a long ruler and draw a line from the point at the ankle to the point where you want to stop sewing higher up. Do this for the other leg and well… now you have your lines to sew on. (You could just eye it but you risk going beyond your end point and making them too tight in the thighs.) This line should simply be a very gradual tapered angle that will blend in with the existing seam.
• What color jeans do you have? Are they black, grey, blue… what color is the top stitching at the hem? Figure out the color thread you need and get your machine ready. The insides of jeans are serged but this will just be a seam with raw edges when you’re done so, you will get loose threads after a while. I recommend setting your machine for the closest stitch you can for strength. (More stitches per inch… like the #1 setting). (If you want, you can also do a ziz-zag stitch at the very edge once you’re done and cut the excess off, to help keep them from fraying eventually. I didn’t care I even have a serger!)
• Okay… time to sew! Follow your line on one leg and try your jeans on inside out again and make sure everything is the way you want. If not, rip that seam out and start again. No big deal. Get it right and sew the other leg. Cut off the excess (only when you are 200% positive that they are right), leaving about a 1/2″ seam allowance. Measure twice – cut once, ya hear!?
• Now it’s time to hem. Most machines have a free arm on them so you can do slim round openings such as this. Remove that casing, keep your jeans inside out, fold your hem back up and squeeze your pants leg under the needle, matching the existing threads with your new stitch. Make your stitch size bigger (3 to 4 is the usual for denim topstitches) and hem up the couple inches that are still undone, making sure to backstitch at the beginning and end for strength. It’s not going to look exactly the same as the existing hem stitching, unless it’s the same color and just blends in. Please tell me you are not that anal retentive. You are? Well, I guess you better rip and do the entire hem on the machine for consistency. Geesh!

So that’s that! It took me no time to do my grey pair and once I knew exactly what I was doing, I think I broke a land speed record for the second pair. I’m pretty short (5’1″) so when I have altered these not-so-skinny jeans, I get a sweet bunched effect at the ankle. So, here’s a picture of one leg done. Woohoo! Feet up in the air!

If you have any questions about this process or any other brave sewing endeavors, let me know!

PS – that Wet Seal top I mentioned a few posts back… well, it was open down the front! I was wondering why it said “wrap” because they usually show them open in the pictures. Well… that took a quick trip through the sewing machine too and now I have a sweet asymetric tunic tank like I thought I was getting!

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Tagged as: diy, fashion