written by threadslinger

I have been wanting a pair of skinny jeans, but I had a hard time finding a pair that were the right legth for me. This is a constant problem for women my size (5′2) but is made worse by skinny jeans because you have the weird bunching at the bottom of the leg if they are too long. So, I decided to make my own. There are quite a few tutorials out there so I read them and then created my own.

Before:

After:

Materials
Jeans (ones that fit you well)
sewing machine (with a jean needle)
pins
marker

1. Put your jeans on inside out and draw a faint line starting at your knee. Then take off the jeans and pin down that line. This should make a straight leg. Do not cut anything yet.

2. Sew along that line of pins. Then try on jeans to see if it is the right fit, ie not too tight or too loose. Repeat until you get it just right.

3. At the knee there will be some fabric bunching. The solution I came up with is to try on the jeans, draw the line from your thigh and sew the line again. This part was kind of frusterating and took a lot of me trying on the jeans to make sure that they fit just right and that there wasn’t a huge bunch on the side.

4. After you are satisfied with the leg cut off the access jeans. Repeat these steps on the other leg and bam! you’ve got your self some skinny jeans.

This is a joint tutorial! Here’s my (Marie Ann) version of the same instructions. I didn’t have any jeans I was willing to part with so I used this real military pants that were too manly anyway.

Before:

 After: (there isn’t actually a buble on the left leg, that’s just how it was sitting when I shot the photo)

 I have one tip to add.  I suggest fully completing one leg first.  Then fold that leg over (very very carefully) and trace that to the other side.  This gets you closer to the completely size much quicker than the pin / try out method that you have to use for the first leg.