I really want a new pair of regular jeans, but there weren't any on sale in the women's section of Uniqlo. While I was pretty confident my idea would work, I was just a tad unsure and didn't want to ruin a new pair of jeans - not that Uniqlo is expensive, but why throw away more money than necessary. I took a look at the sales and picked up a cheap pair of patterned jeans. I'm a little nervous about them. I like the idea of patterned jeans, but I am not really sure about pulling them off well. Regardless, I bought them!
They started out as just a regular pair of jeans in my regular size. At Uniqlo you can have pants hemmed for free and in usually about 30 minutes, so while I couldn't button or even zip them up, I pulled my sweater down low and called the dude over to fix the length. Then we went and had lunch, picked up my jeans and headed home.
The first thing I did was carefully cut out the zipper.
Then I cut a huge semi-circle from almost the very bottom of the fly up to fit my ever-growing belly. I wanted the back of the waistband to be intact since shirts often ride up leaving that part exposed. If at all possible, I wanted these jeans to look like regular jeans (who would I be kidding!?!). As a note, the pocket pictured on the right looks like I cut it out completely. I did not - the pocket lining just folded over.
To keep the pocket lining from folding over while I was sewing, I did a baste stitch to keep it attached to the denim.
Then I took a piece of white jersey, wrapped it around me and marked where the end met the rest of the fabric, i.e. I took a measurement of my stomach the super lazy way. Then I cut a rectangle with that length and a height of about 40 centimeters. I folded the rectangle down so that it was now only 20 centimeters high and zigzagged the raw bottom seam together.
Doing the same tube thing that I did to make K's circle scarf, I pulled one end into the other. Then I sewed the raw end together, in the same way that I made the scarf, only I left the opening at the very top edge so I could insert elastic at the end.
I lined the raw/zigzagged edge up with the cut edge of the jeans and was really lucky when they almost perfectly matched up. It probably would have made more sense to measure the diameter of the cut jeans and then cut the fabric to match (or cut the fabric a tad smaller to make it a bit tighter), but I didn't think of that until I realized that I would have been in a bit of a pickle if it, by chance, had not ended up so perfectly.
Once that was sewed on, I flipped it up and saw that aside from the elastic at the top, the jeans pretty much looked how I had wanted them to - success!
The final step was to put in some elastic, I bought really thick elastic as I thought it would have more holding power. Again, I very scientifically measured my stomach by wrapping the elastic around and cutting it a tad short to get the waistband snug. I probably could have made it even tighter, but I didn't want to bother with fixing it and I figure it works fine, and will become snug soon enough.
From the front, I don't think you can tell they are a total hack job. They look like regular jeans. Yay!
Take off a couple of layers of tops, pull up the shirt a little, and it becomes quite obvious that I am pregnant. That being said, we went to the doctor on Saturday morning and everything looks great. The baby is growing perfectly, we saw the heart, brain, spinebone, leg bones, arms, hands and fingers. I am only 17 weeks and pretty big, but it has been confirmed on many occasions now that I am NOT carrying twins.
As a side note, do any of you have any suggestions of what to wear with these jeans?! I am so lame.
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