Mending and tightening winter pants

This winter, when I put on my wool pants and had to look for a belt to hold them up because the waist was too wide, I decided that this would be the last time since I don't like wearing belts on pants because they create volume in the belly area.

Now that I have more experience in arranging clothes I thought it would be a good time to try tightening the waist of my pants, and as the brown ones were used so much that the fabric between the legs was worn out until there were holes in them, I decided that I would start by trying to mend them and if all went well I would tighten the waist.

After

Before

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I started mending and tried two techniques, the first was using the mending stitch on my sewing machine, this is done using the buttonhole presser foot. I didn't like the result or the way of doing it, I found it difficult to work with the presser foot, the field of vision was very small and as the area to be mended was large I had to move the presser foot several times.

On the second leg I decided to do it with the open toe / embroider presser foot so I could see it clearly and I sewed it following the direction of the weave of the fabric threads, which meant sewing diagonally. In addition, I used two different colors of thread, first I stitched with a beige thread following the beige threads of the fabric, then I changed the thread to brown and sewed over the brown threads. The result with the second method was quite good, you can barely see the mending.

At this point I decided to try on the pants, thinking that the first patch would be noticeable when I was wearing them, but I was wrong, you didn't notice anything and I decided to go for the waist tightening. As the pants are lined, I had to separate the lining from the outside to get to the seams.

I always have difficulty knowing how much to tighten, I started by measuring my waist and the waist of my pants to see what the difference was between these measurements, it was 8 cm, so I would have to take 4 cm on each side but I thought it was too much, so I chose to start by removing 2 cm on each side. After the sewing was done, I put the pants on and they looked good, no need to tighten more.

As the pants had one of the darts unsewn, I took the opportunity to sew it again, then I also tightened the lining 2 cm on each side and cut the excess waistband. I joined the waistband by sewing it so that it was under the belt loop and attached the waistband to the pants again.

Satisfied with the result I decided to try tightening another pair, for the second pair I used another technique since the waistband was high, I opted to make two 1 cm darts just on the waistband, I basted the darts and put them on to see if it would be enough, since they where good I just had to sew them and that was it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These pants had an hole on the lining and I took the opportunity to place a patch in that area, I was too zealous when finishing it, I overlocked both the patch and the lining and then when I applied the patch I used a zig zag stitch, and at that time I found It would have been better to just use a zigzag stich to join the pieces, it would have created less volume around the patch, now I know for next time.

I also started making a video of the black pants but when I edited it, it seemed to me that the video didn't turn out well, black is always difficult to show in a video so I chose not to finish it and post it, I'll leave you with the video of the brown pants.