Wednesday, July 10, 2019

I made myself a pair of selvedge jeans

I did it. I cut into my rigid Japanese selvedge denim and sewed myself some selvedge jeans (sorry no photos yet).
The sewing pattern I used was the Style Arc Sandra narrow-leg jeans, with the leg shortening and rise shortening described in my earlier post (about the jeans made with minimal stretch denim).

I made these additional modifications:

  • a flat bum modification in the back leg pattern, to reduce the amount of below-the-bum wrinkling 
  • redrew the legs so that the side seams are straight up and down, and the inner leg seams are moved to keep the leg width the same - based in this diagram on Pinterest (thanks Reyna Lay).

I decided to wash the denim before cutting into it. I can't tell for sure whether the fabric is raw or sanforised, but if it's raw and I wash it I'm sure the jeans will still fade nicely - just not as markedly as they do on unwashed raw denim.

Once I cut out all of the pieces I realised that I might have enough denim to make another pair as the leg pieces take up less than half of the width of fabric. Or I might make something easier to wear, like a skirt!

Apparently rigid denim jeans are supposed to fit tightly at first, and they should loosen as you wear them and conform to your body. So I made them tight around the hips.

I've started wearing these in, though they still don't have or hems. They might shrink in the next wash, or I might decide they are just too uncomfortable to wear and not worth finishing!

These definitely fit better than my last pair as there are less back thigh wrinkles, but its difficult bending down in them.  I followed the advice to do the squat and lunge while wearing them, and squatting is a bit of a strain.  Am I too old to be breaking in stiff jeans?



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