So I’ve had a stack of old jeans hanging out in my closet. Most are too long and when I’d wear them, I’d roll up the bottoms. I was visiting one of my favorite blogs, Melissa Esplin and saw her blog post with a pair of re-fashioned jeans. She provided links to tutorials, I took a look at one of them and it was for kids pants. I went took the general idea from the tutorial and had a stab at it myself.

Steps to re-fashion a pair of jeans

1. Flip the jeans you’d like to alter inside out.

2. Find a pair of jeans that fit you well and would like to mimic. Flip these inside out as well. Tip: my first attempt at re-fashioning my jeans was unsuccessful because I didn’t use a pair that fit tight through the thighs and waist.

3. Lay your good jeans on top of the one’s you want to alter. Make sure the good jeans are aligned to the inner legs of the old. This will show you how much that you’ll need to cut off. I call the extra material “the flare”.

4. Get out a ruler and sewing marker. Draw a straight (this could be a bit slanted) line down. Hold them up and see if it looks like a good fit.

5. Now this next step took sometime. Hop on your sewing machine and sew right along that line. Try the one leg on and see how you did. Not a great fit? Go back to the drawing board and adjust where your line was drawn. Yes, you’ll have to use your handy dandy seam ripper. Don’t worry its not as painful as it seems.

6. Good fit? Nice job! Now do the same to the other side. Visually gauge how far in and where you started the seam for the other leg.

7. Now for the hem. Leave about 1 1/2″ - 2″ and draw a straight line across for both legs. Fold the fabric twice in 1/2″ folds. Sew!

That’s it! 7 easy steps and you have yourself a pair of re-fashion skinny jeans!