Thursday, March 10, 2011

Turning boot cuts into skinny jeans by Bloom guest Cami

Ooooooh we are excited about this one! Thanks for being here, Cami!
Hi everyone, I'm Cami from Candied Apples and I am so excited to be visiting Bloom again! Today I'm going to show you how to take a pair of boot cut jeans and make them into skinny jeans.

Let me start by saying, I'm slow getting into the skinny jean trend. I own a pair of black skinny jeans and that's it. So I definitely need more pairs. And, this pair of boot cut jeans was a little weird, so I was going to get rid of them and decided to try altering them. I am so happy how they turned out! Here's how you can do it too.


First you want to try the jeans on inside out. Jeans all have either the outside seam or inside leg seam that looks like it can be taken in. It's not the one with bulky decorative stitching. So check before you pin to determine if you're taking fabric from the outside of the leg or the inside. My jeans could be taken from the outside. (I think most jeans can be taken in from the outside of the leg).


So you can see my pins here. I don't want them to be skin tight but I definitely want them to be skinny. Carefully take your pants off and sew along the pins.


Try them on again just to make sure. When you're happy with the fit, take a deep breath and cut the extra fabric away. Remind yourself you were going to get rid of these pants anyway, so if you botch it you can just get rid of them. To avoid fraying I used pinking shears and then a large zigzag stitch along the edge.


Try them on again. And mark where you need to hem them, if you do. I definitely do. There are many great tutorials on hemming jeans but since my jeans were sewn with white thread I just cut off the extra, folded up twice and sewed around to make a new hem. I don't think anyone can tell. Seriously. Oh and you'll need a heavy duty needle. I broke one because it wasn't for heavy fabric.


Here they are. All done.


And here they are with boots. Lovely. So, try it. I'd love to see what you come up with.

4 comments:

Megan said...

Too cute! I'm also a late arrival to the skinny jean trend. I feel so exposed in them for some weird reason and am only willing to wear them with boots. The boots give me a sense of coverage (if boots can do that...ha!). I need to give this a try!

Sally said...

I've been wanting to do this to a pair of my jeans for a while but have been too chicken. I might just go ahead and do it now. Thanks!

Joan said...

HOW CLEVER! I don't consider myself a seamstress on ANY level but I think I could handle this one :)
Thank you for sharing this with us, Cami!

annie said...

I did this after I bought my first pair of skinny jeans. It was sooo easy!