An evolution has gone on with jeans.
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| Where to take in the leg of your trousers |
Way back when, you got jeans. More or less the same style jeans, made by a handful of manufacturers. Since then a whole bunch of designers and celebrities have jumped on the jeans bandwagon and now jeans come in all manner of shapes, styles, washes and colours.
You can choose what sort of rise you prefer. Modern denim comes with more, or less stretch. The size and position of pockets has become a huge big deal. Stitching is not just stitching anymore, it now defines your jeans. And jean legs range from ultra skinny to wide flare legs.
Just when you find the right fit for your body, they go and change the look of the moment. And you have to hunt for your perfect jeans all over again.
Wait! Don’t be in such a hurry to turf out your favourite jeans. You may be able to restyle them without too much difficulty.
First up, you can’t take a low waist jean to a high waist jean. Well you can, but that is a monumentous restyle and not for easy sewing projects. And, while it is possible to add an insert to the leg of skinny jeans to widen the leg, I wouldn’t advise that either. The colour and weight of the fabric will vary and it may look tacky.
You can however, a la Mariah Carey, cut the waist band off a pair of high waisted jeans. You would wear your jeans without a waistband.
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| Run and fell seam on left and flat seam to right |
And what you can easily do, is take in the leg of wide leg or boot leg jeans. You can also easily shorten the hem of a pair of jeans.
The current must-have jeans are skinny crop jeans and slim boot cut jeans. You can turn your old style jeans into new style jeans. I’ve shown how to take in the legs of your jeans in this blog post – how to take in the leg of your jeans.
One word of warning – do not to try and sew where there is a run and fell seam. (see picture at left) Take your jeans in on the flat seam.
Remember to cut off excess fabric after you have taken in the leg and over-lock or zig-zag stitch the raw edges to neaten them.
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| Hem aligned correctly to the left and incorrect on right |
When it comes to hems, I take the easy way out and stitch over the hem. Just make sure your line up the hem so it is neat and tidy. (See pic at right) If you unpick the hem, then you will have to resew it.
To shorten the leg, you simply put in a shorter hem. Have a look at this link for a hem how-to – how to hem your jeans.
There are more restyling ideas in this post – DIY restyling ideas for jeans and denim.
Jeans have gone from being weekend only wear to a wardrobe staple and a seriously stylish item to wear on a night out or on dress-down-Fridays. Getting it right is tres important. By restyling, you can have your jeans and wear them, season after season.
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| Restyled bootleg trousers to pencil leg trousers |
What you can do to jeans, you can also do to trousers. If you over invested in wide leg or boot leg trousers for the office, you can modify them in the same way too. The trousers in the very first picture were taken in and are now, not quite skinnies, more of a pencil leg. Which is my favourite style. Have a look what they look like now in the last photo to the left.
For more ideas to make or restyle old clothes visit the Greenie Galleries at the top of this page.
You can share your ideas to up-cycle or re-cycle your old clothes on the Greenie Dresses for Less facebook page.
See you next week.
Greenie