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!
