Finished jeans ... and some tips!

So, you have been warned, my jeans are finished and, yes, they are purple

But that is the wonderful thing about making your own jeans – you can make them any colour you like! The fabric is a cotton twill with a little lycra and it’s just perfect for a summer-weight pair of jeans – it is sturdy but cool.

These jeans are the product of taking Jennifer Stern’s ‘Blue Print to Blue Jeans’ course on Pattern Review. It was excellent – I got some great fitting advice by posting pictures of my muslin for Jennifer to comment on.

Here is the back view


And this is the pattern I used, it’s McCall’s 5894
I did, however, make the fit a little different because I lowered the front rise by about an inch and I narrowed the legs from the hips to the knees. I was aiming for a ‘relaxed’ fit with a slight flare. If you are thinking of using this pattern, the instructions are excellent but you might want to go down a size from the one they give for your measurements.

When it comes to making jeans I do think that it is worth the effort of adding the details that turn a pair of pants into a pair of jeans




The contrasting topstitching, the coin pocket, the rivets and the belt loops all give the garment ‘authenticity’ and a nice toughness, even if you aren’t working with denim.

When looking at the close-up photograph of the front, above, you might be wondering if I lost control of my sewing machine when it came to topstitching the coin pocket because on one side of the pocket the stitching extends to the waistband. This wasn’t a mistake, it’s one of the design suggestions that Jennifer gave us in the course and if you look at RTW jeans you will find that quite a lot of them have similar interesting stitching details.

While constructing my jeans there were two pieces of equipment that I found invaluable. This one,

called a Jean-a-ma-jig, is a simple but ingenious device that helps your machine get over the hump of lots of layers of fabric. In fact my jeans weren’t as bulky as denim but the difficulty wasn’t stitching through a lot of layers of fabric so much as when I had a difference in layers, i.e. when there is a hump of fabric and the presser foot can’t lie flat. Without the Jean-a-ma-jig I would never have got my belt loops sewn on without throwing my machine (and myself!) out of the window.

The second thing is a pair of Prym Vario Pliers.

These pliers, which cost about £9.50, make inserting rivets very easy indeed. One squeeze makes the hole, then you change the heads, place the rivets in the pliers, another squeeze and they are in. It’s very quick, simple and secure. I also used the pliers for attaching my jeans button (when you buy the buttons they come with the special heads for the pliers). No need for hammers, screws, wooden blocks etc. I purchased mine at Kleins in central London. If you want to see them in action, Kleins have a video on YouTube, you can see it here

Another tip. I discovered that it is much easier to make a neat buttonhole if you don’t sew down the front belt loop on the buttonhole side until after you have made the buttonhole. I made a couple of trial buttonholes on spare fabric without any difficulty but when I tried it on the real thing my machine jammed up. What was happening is that the back of the buttonhole foot (which extends quite a long way) didn’t like having to go over the belt loop. Once I had unpicked the stitching that held the belt loop down, so that I could fold it out of the way, the machine did the buttonhole without any trouble.

Before I go, I must, of course, also mention Peter’s MPB Jeans Sew-Along. If you want a clearly explained tutorial on jeans construction then Peter’s blog is the place to go.

Having finished making a pair of jeans I feel quite light-headed. Designer jeans cost a lot of money – it’s a billion dollar business - and there is something very liberating about the thought that I can make some of my own. In any colour, with any of the little design details that I fancy. And if I can, then believe me, so can you!