Another pair of jeans narrowed...

I love wearing boots in the fall and winter but most of the jeans I find for 20 cents at the thrift store do not fit well with them. Beggars can't be choosers I guess. I found some black jeans (something I didn't have yet) that I knew could look good with my boots. I apologize for not actually showing an after picture with the boots but I wanted to show the taper which is what makes them fit anyhow.

beforeafter

Pardon the shadows from the flash. It makes them look kind of lumpy but they aren't.

My daughter took the pictures for me (she's awesome).

Generally, I put them on wrong side out and take a marker to the leg. Just kind of pull the fabric out to the side and mark where I will want to stitch. You have to taper both inside and outside seams for it to look right.

One thing I have some trouble with is my shape. I have big thighs and kind of big calves with rather narrow knees. This means that if I take jeans that fit fine in the thighs and make a straight taper from thigh to calf to ankle - I end up with loose bunching at the knee. This defeats much of the point of trying to make them fit in the boots. Who cares if the calves are not buched up inside the boot if the area at the knee is loose and bunchy. The photo below shows one leg with the knee tapered in just a little bit - kind of a very slight hourglass cut but mostly on the outside (lateral) of the leg. The other leg is just tapered straight from thigh to calf to ankle. I pulled some of that bunchiness out to the side so you can see. It will just bunch up all around normally but it's hard to see well in a photo of black jeans.

So on they go again and out comes the marker as you can see below.

This "quick and dirty" method of resizing pants works great on fabrics with some stretch to them. Jueans, cords, even some slacks.

NOTE: I did not take the time to rip the seam on the bottom hem of these jeans and then re hem. They are fine that way but I do recommend doing the bottom hem properly if you have the patience. It makes a noticable difference if you are going to wear them without boots.