Re-fashioned jeans for Sophie....

Sophie is six and a half years old and already has long legs for her age. So she grows out of her jeans before they have hardly been worn. Girls jeans are so nice with lots of embroidery, beads sequin etc I wish that they made them this nice for us 'big girls'. Sophie hates to get rid of them because of all this sparkly loveliness so we alter them.

These jeans are only from ASDA, so nothing posh and I have been doing this ever since Sophie out grew her first pairs of trousers...

....I take my scissors to them! Sounds drastic but there you go. The length on this occasion was determined by where the pattern finished but Sophie likes longer shorts for the summer. She is prone to eczema on the backs of her legs and is a little conscious of this. So I cut off one leg, nice and straight, you could mark this with a line first.

I then checked the length so that I cut the other leg exactly the same. Make sure that you are 90 degrees with the trouser leg itself when cutting rather than levelling it with your eye/view as there should be a slight angle upwards at the side. Otherwise the inside leg will be shorter than the outside leg side and it will not be right when it is worn. Hope that makes sense. See picture above.

Then carefully fold over about 1cm and then fold over again. It is not necessary to fold it any wider and it will only shorten the length. Pop some pins in so as to keep the hem in place when stitching on the sewing machine.

If you can, remove the front section of your sewing machine so that you can put the trouser leg over the free arm section. If the trousers are very small and will not fit over then you might be just as well to hand stitch this bit. I used a slightly bigger straight stitch so that it could cope better with the thickness of the denim.

Try to use as closer a matching thread as you can. Give the hems a good press. Then...hey presto

....jeans with a new lease of life.

Now, you could add Ric Rac braid or some other embellishment at the bottom of the legs but Sophie wanted them left as they are.

When I get a picture of her wearing them I will add it to this post, but she is very pleased with them. In fact, she was so pleased that she fetched a flowery long sleeved t-shirt that is now too short in said sleeves. So I shall be back..

My main point with this post is that if you have any kiddie cloths that they have out grown then have a go at altering them, what have you got to lose? Any mistakes with a T-shirt means that you end up with a new duster. So have a go all it takes is a bit or planning BEFORE you fetch the scissors and then having a go. You do not need to have a sewing machine, in fact sometimes hand stitching is better, especially with stretchy fabrics. Let me know how you get on.

Bye for now.

Opps, nearly forgot, remember to join in the giveaway, deadline is Sunday 17th May.

xx