Bring me a higher waist

I came of age around the turn of the millennium—in other words, the era of ultra-low-rise pants. At the time, I was new to fashion and embraced the trend with all the enthusiasm of someone who had never known anything else. But I never really understood it. I was frustrated by the fit of low-rise pants, trying valiantly to keep mine on the up and up with a succession of well-used belts (I only owned one belt at time in those pre-Unfashionista days) and always choosing oversized shirts to shrink the gap caused by an very low waistband.

When the tops of bottoms finally started to ascend after a decade, I embraced that trend with all the enthusiasm of someone who had never realized it was an option. Now, with several years of increasingly higher waists behind us, I've reached the point where I absolutely refuse to wear anything that doesn't rest solidly above my pelvis and stay there without a belt. Too low of a rise has become one of my top reasons for returning pants I buy online; but this particular pair was low-rise and not returnable, so I had to do something drastic.

When I was finally brave enough to risk ruining the pants forever (nearly 5 months after their purchase in October), I took them apart so I could reassemble them into a style more to my liking.

First, I picked apart the waistband with my seam ripper. The belt loops were removed, the button snipped out (I tried to take it apart to damage the fabric less, but nothing doing), the buttonholes unstitched—in order to get the inner layer separated from the outer layer, everything else had to go!

Once the waistband was completely removed, I put it all back together in a single layer twice as high.

I used zigazg stitching for maximum stretch, which unfortunately was too loose and can be easily seen from the outside when the material is taut—I'm not sure what else I could have done except maybe a stretch straight stitch, which my machine does, but which takes forever.

What I did was go over my original stitching with another layer in less visible yellow thread. I also tried to better position the seam to hide the original serging, which had been peeking out in places after my first run.

 

The pants were stretchy enough that a button and zipper closure were not really necessary, so I decided not to replace either of those. Instead, I cut out the zipper, sewed the placket shut, and finished the waistband for pull-on ease!

Without the original double layers to give it support, the waistband was now very flimsy and unstructured. I decided to buttress it with a backing of elastic, which I had salvaged from some other pair of pants sometime in the past.

The elastic served to cover up a lot of the raw edges, but there were still several seams left exposed. I tried to mitigate those with a combination of pinking and zigzag overlocking.

 

Where the button and buttonhole used to be, I was left with several unsightly holes. I stitched over them in a haphazard way to close them, but I also had to cover their scars.

 

Since I knew I was never going to wear these stretchy jeggings with a belt, I set three of the old belt loops in a row on the front, to hide the holes and add a little bit of pizzazz to the waistband. They're slightly off-center, but in spite of that, they're my favorite feature of the new pants!

I ended up completely covering up the belt-loop trim in the pants' inaugural outfit, but I'm just lucky I got to wear them at all! The weather is warming up here in Maryland, so soon pants season will be over. Fortunately for these pants, winter hasn't given up the ghost yet. On a cold and rainy Thursday, I put on the pants for a pick-me-up—sunny colors for a sunless day!