Learning to Make Jeans - Part I

In October, I broke the code for making jeans.  Why?  I was tired of jeans never fitting.

(Notice I am in sleeveless and in flip flops on Dec. 2nd ~ ya’ gotta love Texas weather!)

Trust me when I say this ~ jeans are not hard to make.  Who knew.  This is my first pair.  They still need a little tweaking, but overall I’m pleased.

Here’s what I did ~

For my pattern, I used Jalie 2908.  It is designed for stretch denim and the pattern suggests you use a denim with 4% stretch.  I used a denim with 2% stretch and my jeans don’t get overly stretched out when I wear them.

If you’re not familiar with Jalie patterns, they are out of Quebec. I purchased mine through Fabric.com.  It cost me $12.99, however, it includes every size I’ve ever been and a few sizes I’ve yet to reach.

See the child on the pattern cover; her size is included in the pattern, too.

That means I had to sort through 27 different sizes in order to identify mine.

I used my hip measurements to choose my size and, by golly, after a few adjustments, it was spot-on.

Did I mention the pattern has 27 different sizes, from a child all the way up to my nothing-anywhere-close-to-the-model size.

The pattern is really crazy with all of the sizes printed on the two large sheets.

In order to decipher my size from a child’s, I took a colored pencil and traced over the lines in my size.

You could use a highlighter, but with a colored pencil, you can erase if you ‘miss.’

Instead of cutting out the pattern from the pattern sheet, I wanted to preserve all of the sizes for future jeans.

To do this, I had to trace my pattern onto a pattern paper.  A while back I had purchased Swedish tracing paper here.  Tissue paper works, too.  So does medical exam paper.

The other thing I used was a heavy duty, waxy tracing paper that I got in massive quantities here.

To trace my pattern, I laid my Swedish tracing paper onto my cutting table, put the waxy tracing paper (from Richard the Thread) face down, and then put the pattern on top.

I have a piece of cork stuck onto my cutting table; this allows me to pin the pattern in place with push pins.  Cans of soup or pattern weights will work well too.

I took a needle-point tracing wheel and traced over my colored pencil markings.

While all of these steps may seem tedious, they really paid off when I went to cut out my fabric.

And, it was a cinch to make a few minor adjustments for my second pair of jeans.

I'm dubbing this week {unofficially} Jeans Making Week.

During this week I will show more of the process I went through while making a second pair of jeans.

Until then ~