Sew....

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Jean Genie

Random Australian Fact: jeans come in only one length here. Long. No short, no regular, just long. Then you either give the store ten bucks on top of the price of the jeans and they send them off to be shortened, or you take them to a tailor. Or, you adjust them yourself. I wouldn't be happy doing that with a 100 dollar pair, but I have an old maternity pair from last winter (back then I couldn't see my ankles anyway and hence wasn't much bothered about roll-ups for a couple of months!), so I decided to practice on them. Short of travelling to Singapore to purchase regular length M&S jeans, adjusting them is my only future option, and why pay someone else?  They still fit ok as they're the very low rise maternity kind with a stretchy bump panel that I can fold over the waistband, so they'll do me for around the house this winter too.

The nice lady in Just Jeans at the Plaza explained to me how to get the length right a few weeks ago, when I was bemoaning the impossibility of finding jeans that fit (it's due to small population size, apparently - they tried selling different lengths but it just wasn't cost effective to stock them all). The trick is to have the jeans just touch the floor at the back of the heel when in stockinged feet, and pin. I used dark blue thread as that's what I had and they look fine, but next time I think I'll try and find a thread that matches the jean thread. Also I'll do a double-turned hem instead of a single hem with zigzag stitch on inside to prevent fraying. In hindsight I should have done some research first but I only had morning nap-time to satisfy my sewing craving, so I just grabbed the jeans as a quick project, and ran!

Sew anyway...it's already Thursday afternoon and no sunhat! However, hat pattern has been chosen and material selected from stash. Just need some medium-weight sew-on interfacing and I'm good to go tomorrow afternoon - at least that's the plan!

1 comment:

  1. Since writing this post I've been informed that assistants in several dedicated jeans shops have misled me! Lack of short and medium leg length is not a nationwide phenomenon - Target & Big W stock jeans in s/m/r. I shall be checking them out! Thanks to Jen & Marieka :)

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