Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Save My Pants!! Phase 1: Turn Flares into Skinnies.


So...I have these pants.  They don't stay up, the front pockets pop out, one pant leg is worn off at the ankle more than the other, and they're about 5 years old.  I never wear them because of all the "issues" I have whenever I do.

I saw this post (via Pinterest, obviously) for making skinny jeans out of flared jeans, and I immediately wanted to make some.  I've been wanting some skinny jeans for a long while, but I have a ton of jeans and couldn't really justify buying another pair, so I thought this was just perfect.

In the tutorial, the girl uses a pair of skinny jeans as a kind of pattern, but, as previously mentioned, I don't have any skinny jeans, so...I tried anyway.  I figured if I ruined these pants it wasn't a huge loss because I don't wear them very often.


First, I turned the pants inside out.  Then I put them on.  Then I just eyeballed how skinny I wanted my jeans to be.  Be sure to leave a little wiggle room so these don't look like jeggings (unless that's really what you want...then go for it).  **REMEMBER:  You can always make add another seam to make them skinnier if you hate how they look.  It's a lot harder to make it bigger if they end up being skin tight!**  Then just pin in a line, tapering in from the seam at the knee and down to the ankle.


Take them off carefully, then sew down the line, taking the pins out as you go.  Be sure to back stitch at the beginning and end.

Turn them right-side out and try them on!  See if you like the look.  If they're still too wide for you, turn them inside out and sew another line a quarter of an inch in from the first seam.  Try them on, repeat if needed.


Once you have one leg looking how you want, turn them inside out again and lay the pants on a table.  Flatten out the leg as much as possible, then fold the pants in half, with the un-skinny leg on top of the skinny leg.  I don't know if you can see the seam on the bottom leg in the next picture, but you will fold the un-skinny leg over just to where the seam is on the skinny leg...I really hope that makes sense.  Hopefully you can see the picture to figure it out if you're not getting it.

(p.s.  Don't mind the pink stripe on the bottom pant leg in these pictures...it was my first attempt, which didn't work out.)


Then you're going to mark the un-skinny leg to show where you're going to sew.  I took a sharpie (which can bleed through jeans, so draw lightly, or just use something else) and drew a dotted line along the edge of the pants where the seam would be.


All the way up to the knee...



Making sure to taper the line in at the knee so you don't get any weird bulges of fabric.

Then you just connect the dots, add a couple of pins on either end to keep the layers together, and sew down your line.  Easy.


You might want to try your jeans on at this point to make sure they look even and they're how you want them to look.  Then just cut off the excess material.


And you're done!!  Unless you're like me and have a million other issues with your pants...

In the next few days I'll show you how to fix this problem:


And these problems:


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