Making Skinny Pants

I must admit that I'm a little hooked on Pinterest.  But I take comfort in the fact that I am now able to do many things that I never would have even tried before.  There are so many tutorials - it's hard to resist finding more and more.

So I ran across a blog called Refashion Forward.  I haven't yet looked at the rest of her blog because I was stuck on how she converted some boot cut jeans into skinny jeans.  I have a LOT of boot cut jeans!!!  In fact, that's all I've worn since college.  I love boot cuts - especially when I wear my cowboy boots, but sometimes I just want some skinnies to tuck into my other boots.  I have one pair of skinny jeans that fit pretty well, so I figured I might try Refashion Forward's trick to convert some old jeans to something new.

I am all about hand-me-downs.  A friend of mine recently gave me a ton of pants.  In the pile was a pair of cords.  They're soft and not too thick, but had a HUGE boot cut.  I knew I wouldn't wear them with the big opening, so they were the guinea pigs.

 

Of course I forgot to take a picture BEFORE I started sewing, so I thought I'd lay them out before I did any cutting.  See how large the cut is?  I took my pair of skinny jeans and laid them on top of the inside out cords.  With a fabric pen I outlined the jeans.  Then I just sewed right down ink line.  It was quite simple.

Now I did a 2nd line of stitches right beside the original to give it a little more reinforcement.  Once that was done then I cut the excess fabric.

Now since the pictures don't really give the best visual of the difference, I took 2 different pictures of the size of the hems.

This is the original leg.  Notice it's 10 inches.

And here is the new leg at only 6.5 inches.

I will need to take off some length or roll the bottoms up each time I wear them, but it's not a bad job.  I'm excited to wear these "new" pants of mine!

(Photo is courtesy of Travis!)