I made myself some skinny jeans!

I made myself some skinny jeans!

• 5.01.2010

April 2012 Update: I no longer transform jeans this way!  You can basically do the following, but turn the jeans inside out first, and use a pair of existing skinnies as a sort of pattern.

I've been looking into cute outfits for an upcoming trip I'm taking to France, and I decided I needed some new skinny jeans, the plain leggings-ey kind.  Forever 21 has some for $9.50!  I fully intended to buy some, but they come in different lengths (which is so cool for people of different heights), and they didn't have my inseam at either of the Forever 21s I went to.  I thought about visiting a third, but when I was home I pulled out a pair of jeans from the bottom of my mending pile.  These were reeeeally flared and sort of short.  Not cute, definitely several years old but never worn much, I think I got them at the Goodwill Outlet.

I tried them on and pinned the part where I thought they should begin to taper.

I unpicked the topstitching on the inseam and took in both sides.  I trimmed the extra off the seam allowance and re-hemmed them.  These jeans were particularly easy to do this with because they were hemmed very weirdly... anyway.
Ta-da!

Instead of buying new jeans, ridiculously cheap though they may be, I took the eco-friendly route and made my own!