Hemming your jeans: How to alter your jeans and keep the original hem

I'm cheap. I must confess, I don't understand the designer jean trend. Or the fact that people aren't even batting an eye at paying nearly $200 (or more!) for a pair of jeans. It baffles me. I recently went to a garage sale where the gal was selling about 3 dozen pairs of her designer jeans, all for about $10 a pair. Add that up people. That's a lot of money on jeans!

I found two pairs of jeans in my size and thought I would give them a chance. I even commented to the gal selling them that I don't normally pay $10 for clothes at garage sales. She said I would have less buyers remorse at $10 than she did at $180! I think she was right.

Other than the price tag, the other thing that is difficult about designer jeans is that unless you are supermodel tall, you will probably have to have your jeans hemmed. Add another $15-$20 for that. Most people pay more to have the original hem left in tact and I must say, it does look better. I looked into getting these jeans hemmed, but paying more for the tailoring than I did for the jean didn't seem right, so I set to work trying to figure out how to do it on my own. I found that it was so easy!

This is how this particular Seven for All Mankind wideleg bootcut jean started out.

I folded up the bottom to a length that I thought would work when I wore heels or flats.

The second pair of jeans were Joes Jeans. If you notice the original hem isn't as thick on that pair.

After you fold them up to the desired length, take them off. Measure the folded area not including the already hemmed part of the jean. In this case I had 1 1/2" that was too long.

Divide that number (3/4" in my case) and fold the bottom to that length all the way around the jean. Make sure you line up seams on both sides.

I then pinned it in place. Only work with one leg at a time just in case you mess up or need to make it shorter or longer than you anticipated. Take your jeans over to your machine and start stitching just below and as close as you can get to your original hem line, making sure you backstitch.

This will leave you with a little excess fabric pocket of sorts. If you look closely in the picture below you can see my black stitching just below the hem.

Can you see how there is a little extra fabric in there? On this jean I left it. You can cut it off, using your serger but it didn't get in the way, so I left it, just in case I grow a few inches and need to take them out.

On the Joes jeans with the smaller original hem, I cut the extra fabric off. I was too lazy to change my serger thread so I am doing a little experiment to see if it matters.

The final step is to press the seams down.

That's it! So easy!

No more puddle around my feet.