I am so sorry to subject you all to this, but instead of pretty quilts we will be looking at pictures of my butt today. Seriously. Because one of my sewing goals last month was to finally, after sewcrastinating for over two years, attempt to alter some ready to wear jeans that were too big in the waist. I DID ONE! So now I need to write down how I did it and what I am thinking about doing differently next time, before I forget. There will be quilty goodness in my next blog post, I promise, but today there is nothing but an alterations brain dump and a lot of butt pictures. Well, let's get on with it!
Behold, the Booty Darts and the Altered Waist Band!
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| Completed Back Waist Jeans Alteration, 2.5 Inches Taken In, Dart Method |
In true Rebecca form, I have spent hours pouring over various online tutorials for this alteration, agonizing over the pros and cons of each method to the point of paralysis. So, when I saw that a local fabric and yarn shop was offering a Beginner Alterations class specifically on altering jeans by taking in the back waist and hemming the length, I decided this was just what I needed to get me over the sometimes insurmountable hurdle of task initiation. If you're local to Charlotte, this class is offered regularly at Stash Charlotte and the instructor is wonderful, teaching methods that are definitely approachable for beginners and suitable for pretty much any domestic sewing machine, no specialized equipment or accessories required. Class size is limited to four students and it's taught "lab style," each student working on their own alteration with plenty of guidance from the instructor. Stash Charlotte is a Janome dealer and they provide machines for students to use in the class, but I brought my Bernina 475QE with me because I wanted to focus on learning the alteration without having to also adapt to an unfamiliar sewing machine.
I chose to perform surgery on my least favorite pair of hardly-ever-worn jeans that I should never have purchased in the first place, and I apologize for neglecting to take a "before" photo so you could see the issue I was trying to correct. These are stretch denim jeans that fit snugly in my thigh area, but gapped badly at the back waist. I dislike belts because I find them uncomfortable, so when I wore these jeans they were constantly sliding down and having to be yanked back up, especially whenever I stood up after sitting. Super annoying. In class, the instructor had me rip open the waistband and pin in two equal darts that terminate just below the top of the pocket. After sewing the darts, I reattached the waistband and center belt loop. Here's what it looks like inside (this was right before I buried the thread tails from sewing on the belt loop):
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| Inside View, Darts Pressed Towards CB |
Couple quick notes about the waistband: This was a git'-'er-done kind of class and the instructor wanted me to sandwich the raw edges between the folded-under edges of my waistband and then "top stitch close from to the edge from the right side, trying to make sure you catch the inside edge of the waistband at the same time." Um no, I couldn't do that. I begged for a hand sewing needle and basted my waistband in place before machine sewing to be sure I was precisely on the edge on both sides. And yes, a few minutes of hand basting was totally worth it and I would do it again. Second thing, I set my machine to a stitch length of 3.0 for that top stitching, yet I got tiny stitches and a slightly wavy edge to the waistband. The culprit is the stretch denim fabric. I was on my little travel machine with no dual feed and I was trying to hustle to complete the alteration during the four hour class time, but at home I will experiment with engaging my big machine's Dual Feed feature, reducing presser foot pressure, and who knows what else, because I am picky.
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| Slight Wave at Top of Waistband Where Fabric Stretched While I Was Stitching |
The details: I used Schmetz Jeans needles in size 90 with all purpose polyester sewing thread to sew the darts, and switched to a size 110 Jeans needle for the top stitching using heavyweight Jeans thread in dark gold, which I used in both the needle and in the bobbin. (This post contains affiliate links). By the way, some tutorials advise using jeans thread only in the needle, others say to use it in the bobbin only, and a few tutorials say to use jeans thread in both the needle and in the bobbin. As far as I can figure, the only reason not to use the jeans thread in your needle is if you don't have a big enough needle for this beefy thread, and the only reason not to use it in your bobbin would be if your sewing machine is being persnickety and won't give you a balanced stitch. I don't have either of those problems and I wanted strong, balanced seams that looked just as pretty on the inside as on the outside, so I went with the same thread top and bottom. I used the little plastic "hump-jumper" tool in my machine's accessory kit to level my presser foot as I crossed over those thick yoke seams in my darts. I used the multipurpose presser foot #1 for all of my stitching in class because I don't own an edge stitching or special jeans foot for my portable 5.5 mm machine. For future jeans alterations, I'll use my Bernina B990 with Jeans Foot #8D and possibly also Edge Stitch Foot #10D.
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| Dart Placement Is Not My Favorite, and Pockets Slightly Gap |
Let's talk about what I liked and didn't like about this method. First and foremost, I love that I completed this alteration from start to finish in four hours, and that the jeans FEEL one thousand percent better now when I put them on. No more belt needed, and no more sliding down! That is a HUGE improvement. But this was a "down-and-dirty" alteration in many respects, and I will probably want to tweak some things if I try doing it this way again.
For instance, I don't love the placement of the darts. The instructor had me put them there in order to avoid having to remove and reattach that thick leather label, because not everyone has a sewing machine at home that can handle sewing that tag back on the jeans. Also, the class was geared towards beginners and, the more you rip off and remove, the more complicated it is to put the jeans back together. I get that, but I think the darts would look more deliberate and flattering if they were positioned at the center of each pocket. Levi's Off the Cuff blog has a Tailor Tutorial on this method of taking in the back waist with darts, but they have you remove three sides of the leather tag and fold the pant legs to locate the CB (Center Back) of each leg and position the dart right at CB. I think I would like that better. The Levi tutorial also recommends hammering down the bulky yoke seams before stitching, like with an actual hammer or mallet, and I think that would have helped me to keep those seams more precisely aligned during stitching. I did the best I could with that, and it's not perfect but not worth ripping either.
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| Darts Through Yoke Seam Create Minor Pocket Gaps |
What I like about this dart method is that, from a distance, it's an extremely inconspicuous alteration. The seam where I took in the waistband is hidden beneath the CB belt loop, the yoke seam appears uninterrupted as long as you keep it aligned properly during stitching, and the factory distressing is preserved in all of the key places. If I took the excess out from that CB flat felled seam (scary scary!!!), that lightened distressing would be gone and it would be dark undistressed fabric along the new seam lines. I am seeing a bit of a gap at the top edge of the pockets, but that could be corrected by unpicking the pocket stitching an inch or two on each side, smoothing the pocket flat, and restitching in matching thread. Or just restitching the whole pocket, in which case you might as well embroider some cute flowers on the pockets before reattaching them -- no one will notice the darts if they are too busy admiring the flowers. You know, all these imaginary people who busy themselves scrutinizing the behinds of middle aged women like me... 😂.
The bulk of the darts on the inside of the jeans annoys me less when I'm actually wearing them than I'd expected, but I don't love looking at them on the inside of the jeans. And yes, they are my jeans, so it matters how I feel about the way my handiwork looks on the inside even if no one else can see it. My mom would always inspect the quality of finishing on ready to wear garments in the stores and refuse to buy clothing that was poorly put together. Maybe that stuck with me. Anyway, here's another look at the offending darts that definitely do the job, but do NOT look like a very professional finish (to me):
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| Offending Bulky Darts |
So, a thought: After trying the jeans on to make sure the darts didn't need adjusting, but before reattaching the waistband, I could take them over to my Babylock Triumph serger and resew the darts with a 5-Thread Safety Stitch (Chain Stitch + 3-Thread Overlock Wide), letting the serger knife trim away the excess fabric in the dart:
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| Serger 5-Thread Safety Stitch |
The 5-thread safety stitch sewn above is a ready to wear "industry standard," consisting of a 2-thread chain stitch and a 3-thread overlock stitch that are sewn simultaneously in one pass through the serger. This stitch is not available on all home serger machines, only the ones that have both overlocking and cover stitch/chain stitch capability, and I do have this stitch option on my Babylock Triumph machine. I just this minute realized that the 5-thread safety stitch is what the jeans factory used to sew the inseams on my jeans! After sewing the 5-thread safety stitch in navy thread, they switched to the dark gold topstitching thread and topstitched from the right side for extra strength and to flatten and secure the seam allowance.
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| Factory Sewn Inseam, 5-Thread Safety Stitch in Navy Thread |
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| Same Inseam, Right Side Showing Top Stitching |
Interesting, right? This is a much stronger seam than just one pass with a regular sewing machine straight stitch like the darts I sewed in my altered jeans, it would eliminate most of the bulk, and the overlock part of the stitch would help to flatten out the remaining seam allowance. I think that would look more professional from the inside, too. Thoughts on this, anyone?
But Do These Jeans Really Fit Me Now?
I was delighted with my darts alteration initially, like I said, because it stops the jeans from sliding down and they feel much better than they did before. However, the photos my helpful husband took of my derriere reveal additional fitting issues:
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| Deep Wrinkles Below Seat |
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| My Butt Is Not Filling Out the Seat of My Stretch Jeans |
Brief Anecdote Regarding Butt Wrinkles: I went back to the Lucky Brand store where I got these jeans a few months ago, to buy some new, smaller belts to hold them up (without the long belt flap sticking out on my too-big belts). The sales associate told me that the size 8 jeans I was wearing were way too big for me, and she said the "under-butt wrinkles" were the telltale signs. I was skeptical, but she coerced me into trying on, and subsequently sold me, several pairs of size 4 jeans that fit much better overall with only a slight gap at the back waist, and these new size 4 jeans stay up just fine without a belt and have no under-buttocks wrinkling. So I acknowledge that these stretch denim jeans I'm trying to alter are really too big for me everywhere and not just in the back waist, but I'd hoped that nipping the waist would be enough to solve the problem. Looking at these unflattering photos, though, I am remembering that I could fit another person, or at least a couple of throw pillows off the sofa, into the seat of these size 8 jeans with me, and that's making me reconsider attempting a scarier alteration on the next pair of jeans: taking in the flat felled center back seam so I can remove excess fabric from both the waist and the seat of the jeans. 😱
Who's Afraid of the Flat Felled Seam?
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| LSc-2 in Photo Above Depicts True Factory Flat Felled Seam at CB of Jeans |
Let's talk about that seam and why it's so fraught with danger. The version used for the center back seam of nearly all ready to wear jeans is depicted in the top right drawing above. There are lots of online tutorials that purport to teach home sewers how to create this stitch, but nearly all of them are a mock flat felled seam that looks like the factory version but with only half of the strength, because they are created by sewing a regular seam through two layers of denim, then grading one seam allowance so you can wrap the wider seam allowance around it and then topstitching along the fold. All of the stress of wearing the garment (and there is a LOT of stress to the CB seam in a pair of jeans) is taken by that initial straight stitch seam -- as the seam weakens over time, you will get a vertical white line down your derriere where the lighter weft threads from the inside/wrong side of your denim begin to be exposed along the CB seam. And eventually one day you sit down in your jeans and that seam splits wide open... That is the fear of altering the CB seam, that I won't be able to recreate the stitch neatly to begin with, and that it even if it did look good initially, it wouldn't be strong enough to hold up over time.
In the true factory flat felled seam, one seam allowance is pressed to the right side, the other to the wrong side, and the two seam allowances interlock so with "load bearing" stitching going through four layers on both sides (it looks like only 3 layers in the drawing, but in real life there isn't a gap between the raw edge of the seam allowance and the fold so both rows of top stitching go through both seam allowances and through both the right and left side of the pants. Super, super strong seam in a crucial location subject to a lot of stress in the garment. There is a special industrial machine in jeans factories that folds the seam allowances in opposite directions and positions them automatically for stitching these seams, but my head hurts when I try to think about how I would attempt that at home, dealing not with flat fabric pieces but a partially deconstructed pair of bulky jeans, and a curved seam at that. There's a fantastic discussion about this on the Pattern Review forum here, by the way, that was the source of my flat felled seam illustration.
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| This Tutorial from Angela of Notches Sewing is Awesome! |
And then I discovered this superb jeans alteration tutorial from Angela of Notches Sewing on YouTube. Game changer! Oh, glorious day. I have watched this video four times already and I am about to watch it again. What do I love about Angela's tutorial?
- She unpicks a sample of the factory stitched flat felled seam so I can clearly see how the raw edges fold into one another inside the seam
- She shows how to mark the actual seam line so you can measure and replicate the uneven seam allowances to recreate the stitch
- She demonstrates how to pin and secure these folded edges with a basting stitch that she calls a "holding stitch" -- that ensures that nothing slips out of place when you sew the topstitching
- I love her suggestion to rip and restitch this seam all the way to the crotch of the jeans if you don't have an exact match to the factory top stitching thread. Even with an exact thread match, who wants the backtracking where original and new stitching meet up to be visible in the middle of their butt?!
- Great suggestions to flatten the bulky fabric layers of the belt loop with a hammer or mallet prior to stitching, and to begin and end stitching of the belt loop in the center to prevent the presser foot from shifting it out of place
- I like the way she lined up the yoke stitching and put a few stitches there to secure the matched seams first, before sewing the rest of the seam, also to prevent the presser foot from shifting them out of alignment when the final seam was sewn
And yet, every alteration method seems to have its drawbacks. With taking in the CB seam, even if I nail the fit AND the dreaded flat felled seam, this method of alteration can change the look of the jeans pretty significantly when the jeans have a lot of distressing like mine do. Let me show you some examples from my internet research:
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| Professional CB Seam Jeans Alteration by @sprigasaurus on Instagram |
The CB seam jeans alteration in the photo above was done by a professional and they did a great job, but doesn't it look weird how the center back seam is now practically invisible, like there's no seam at all? That's because of the heavy factory distressing that happened after construction, leaving some darker blue areas to highlight the original flat felled seam at CB. When you take in this seam, all o the distressing detail is eliminated by the alteration and the topstitching thread that was a match to the original just blends into the lighter-allover denim color at the new CB seam line.
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| These Jeans Have So Many Problems... |
I found the picture of this poor little girl's jeans on a Reddit forum where she was asking whether she should go back to the tailor who did this to her jeans and demand that they "fix" them. Did they maybe take the entire excess fabric out in a single CB dart that terminated right at the yoke seam, leaving all of the original width from the yoke point to the crotch? I think these jeans were likely way too big initially for the alteration to be successful by any method, but the reason I'm sharing the photo here is that, again, I think the elimination of factory distressing along the new CB seam makes the jeans look weird regardless of how well they do or don't fit.
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| Another "Professional" Alteration With Issues |
See? Same deal with another professional alteration that someone paid for. In this case the fit is much better. The girl whose butt we are scrutinizing posted her photo online because she is unhappy that her pockets now appear to be crooked and spaced unequally from the CB seam. Due to the low resolution, I can't tell for certain but it looks like they did place the new seam just to the left of the buttonhole. Maybe if they'd done two rows of top stitching it would look better, but if the topstitching thread on these jeans is a blue thread with low contrast we wouldn't really see it anyway without the factory distressing along the seam. Again, it looks weird to me that there is no visible seam here. I think the center back alteration might be best for black or dark wash jeans that have NO distressing. Y'all, this is why I need to figure out how to do this myself. No one charging $30 in an alterations shop is going to nitpick over my jeans the way that I would doing it myself. If I end up with crooked pockets, it needs to be my own fault that they're crooked!
Meet My Next Victim Pair of Jeans to be Altered
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| Next Pair of Jeans Needing Alterations |
I liked this pair of jeans so much, I bought two identical pairs, planning to embellish one of them after correcting the fit. I think I weighed about 15 pounds more than I do now when I bought all of these size 8 jeans, and like the pair I altered in class, they are Lucky Brand jeans with fabric that is 78% cotton, 11% lyocell, 7% lycra, and 4% spandex. Buttery soft, very stretchy denim that grows as you wear it and they are meant to fit snugly and feel like comfy yoga pants. The cut is a little different from the other pair, but they still could benefit from taking 2-3" from the back waist and possibly some from the seat as well.
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| Distressing Along CB Flat Felled Seam Would Be Lost If I Altered There |
So potentially I could get a better fit and no bulky darts or pocket gapping if I took these in along the CB seam, but as you can see, I would lose the distressing and get the weird why-is-there-no-CB-seam look. Also, taking in that seam would bring my pockets so close together they would be almost touching, and THAT would look weird. Taking the pockets off to reposition them is a lot more work, introducing the possibility of crooked pockets if I had trouble positioning them, and again, moving the pockets might create additional surprises with distressing, because there is no distressing or lightening of the denim that is covered by the pockets.
Those considerations bring me back to where I started, with the dart method I learned in class. If I position the darts better as per the Levi's tutorial, and I tweak and test machine settings to elminate the stretching issue, and I hammer down bulky seam intersections, baste to line things up nicely, and maybe fire up the serger to sew a stronger, less bulky 5-thread safety stitch on those darts... What would bother me more, wrinkles below the buttocks or losing the distressing details on the CB seam? Like I said, I have two identical pairs so if I mess one pair up I can continue wearing the other pair with a belt as I've been doing.
Alright, that is (finally) all I have to say on this subject for now. For the record, it took me longer to write this blog post than it did to alter the first pair of jeans. Surprise, surprise. Next time I'll show you pretty quilty things instead of butts; I promise.
I'm linking up with some of my favorite linky parties:
MONDAY
Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Monday Musings at Songbird Designs
TUESDAY
To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt
WEDNESDAY
Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter
FRIDAY
Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts
Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre
Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty
TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday
SUNDAY
Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué
Slow Stitching Sunday at Kathy's Quilts
Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework
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