Do you ever lay in bed at night thinking about your next or current make? I do. All the time. And after I made my first pair of Ginger Jeans by Closet Case Patterns I spent quite a few nights trying to decide which modifications to make for my next pair. I wear jeans practically every day, so making my own that actually fit in all the right places has become one of my life goals. That may sound like a weird life goal, but seriously, a good-fitting pair of jeans makes me feel so confident and beautiful. It’s life-changing.

Just to start off, I thought it might be helpful and interesting to see the first and second pair side-by-side.

So, I realized with pair #1 on the left that there were some major issues in the crotch area. The jeans were quite tight, but the pulling at the crotch just didn’t look right. I went onto the Closet Case website and read the post on fitting your jeans . I knew I had to either lengthen or shorten the crotch, but I was really confused which one to do. When I started doing more research and reading other blogs, everyone seemed to be shortening their crotches instead of lengthening them. In fact, I didn’t find a single blogger who lengthened the crotch. But I did anyway.

Why I lengthened the crotch

Apart from the wrinkles, I noticed that the jeans were pulling down in the front, like there wasn’t enough room in the front for them to sit properly on my waist. Then I started looking at my RTW jeans, and they did the same thing. Also I made the high-waisted version, and these just didn’t seem very high on me. The waistband still sat below my belly button, when it was supposed to sit slightly above it. With dressmaking and shirt making, I know that I have a long torso, and usually have to adjust for that, but it never crossed my mind that I might have a long crotch or abdomen. But it makes perfect sense now!

Jeans #2 Below. Look at that high waist! Yay!

Materials

Denim: 10 oz. dark blue/black denim from Jo-Ann Fabrics (with a coupon it cost me about $10 for 1.5 yards)

Denim shrunk a lot when I washed it. I was barely able to to get all the pieces cut out, even with cutting 6″ off the leg length.
You get what you pay for. It isn’t very sturdy, and doesn’t hold it’s shape that well. This is great denim for making your first few pairs. But once you get the fit down, go out and get some quality denim. Threadbare Fabrics has beautiful American-made denim. And you only need about 1.5 yards for a pair of jeans, so even the nice stuff is affordable.

Hardware: Rivets are from Tailor Taylor . Zipper is one I’ve had in my stash for a while.

Thread: Coats and Clark gold jeans topstitching thread.

Lining: I used a green quilting cotton for the pocket stays and waistband facing. I also used a lightweight fusible interfacing in the waistband.

Modifications

Cut off 6″ from bottom of leg. I didn’t use the lengthen or shorten line on the pattern, but just cut off from the bottom.
Did a full calf adjustment following the Closet Case tutorial.
Lengthened the front crotch by 1/2″ and the back crotch by 1/4″, also using the Closet Case tutorial . Heather isn’t joking when she says very small adjustment make a HUGE difference. I wouldn’t recommend doing anything more than 1/2″.
Curved in the yoke by about 1/2″ on each back yoke piece. This helps pull in the jeans at the top of my booty and give a nice curve. I probably couldn’t gone with a little more curve.
Curved in the waistband by about 1/2″ on two spots on the waistband. This helps with a gaping waistband.

As you can see, these are now true high-waist jeans. And they feel AMAZING. I have never owned a pair of jeans that doesn’t feel like my butt crack will show when I bend over. And my abdomen is actually covered, which sounds weird, but it feel so secure and comfy.

These still aren’t completely perfect, but I am not a perfectionist when it comes to my sewing, and these fit pretty dang amazing for now! Now I’m ready to cut into some of my more expensive denim and see if that helps even more with the fit. I think it will, as the stretch in this denim is pretty wimpy. But they’ll gets tons of wear nonetheless. I already can’t even stand putting my RTW jeans on.