Tuesday I stopped at Frenchy’s (a Maritime thrift store specializing in used clothing) to pick up a couple of pairs of jeans in stretch denim. I tried on several pairs – size 10 fit my waist and the top hip region, but were way to big through the bum and thighs – perfect for what I intended to do with them.

At $4.75 for a pair of jeans I can experiment to my heart’s content! I wanted to see if the dart/seam in the centre back of the pants would give me the fit I’d achieved in SF.

I started by lifting the back pockets:

Then I tried the jeans on putting a pin at the spot of the greatest depth for the dart, another pin to mark the point where the top of the dart ends, and another at the knee.

Next I turned the jeans inside out, used a fabric marking pen to identify the position of the pins. Now to locate the grain line in the back panel (I started at the hem, folding and pinning the back in half, aligning the side and inseams and marking the fold all the way to the mid-hip in back. Once I had the centre back I marked the dart/seam and stitched from the top of the dart (under the pocket) to the knee and continued with a narrow seam to the hem on both legs.

I tried on the jeans to see whether I’d removed enough of the excess fabric – pretty good fit. So I pressed the seam, pinned and restitched the pockets in place. 

I measured the inseam (a good length for me is 27″), added 1 1/4″ for the hem, cut the legs, serged the hem edge, folded, pressed, and stitched the hem.

Not bad huh? Took me about an hour and a half.