Blokey and I have made spring break very very productive, although not necessarily in terms of "work." Today was beautiful, so of course we did a massive trip to Ikea that basically ate up the whole day. Before leaving, I decided to skinny and old pair of jeans. I forgot to take a before picture but luckily someone else did a long time ago, when my hair was still very long and I used to speak at rallies.
Back when Rad was a grad (student). I'm on the extreme right, in case you were wondering. Why did I ever wear my hair that long?
I learned that non expert sewers can skinny their own jeans through other bloggers, such as E. from Academichic and Amber from Painfully Hip (and her About.com features). It's pretty easy. I turned a pair of older jeans inside out and traced the difference between the leg seams of another pair of similar skinny jeans. Or you can turn them inside out, put them on and then pin where you'd like the skinny part to start. I then marked it with my tailor's chaulk, and sewed in 2 straight seams (my favorite kind). Then I cut off the excess fabric.
But what to do with the edges? Denim frays like crazy. You can either use pinking shears or a zigzag stitch, but luckily, my sewing machine has a crazy mock overlock stitch, which does a good job of faking the stitches of a serger. I used a red thread, mostly because I have alot of it and these stitches are thread heavy. I had to adjust the tension a bit and found that faster speeds worked best.
The top is the new, Rad-ified finished seam
My Janome's fake overlock (I should have cut the seam extras bit shorter)
real overlock stitch made by a commercial serger
I also ended up trying it on, realizing that my rights leg was a bit snugger than the other, and I went and retraced the seam on the left leg, using the right leg as a guide. I dig these "new" jeans because unlike my snooty Blank jeans, which are all trendy and aspire to be boutiquey, these are more relaxing fitting (yet are skinny.)
Blokey was really impressed and considered letting me skinny his jeans, but then took it back after he realized that I could not just de-skinny the jeans. Ah, the mind of my man.
Jeans: very old Levis, Macys, skinnied by me
Shirt: little boy's western shirt, via Ebay
Belt: old Gap
Shoes: Ecco (not comfy, strangely, despite the high price tag)
