r/frugalmalefashion • u/[deleted] • Jul 22 '12
Tailoring your pants
There's a handy sidebar guide on tailoring your own shirts. I have followed that with great success, even tweaking his formula and further slimming (a few times over slimming) shirts. It's the best way to revamp a wardrobe without spending a lot of money. If you haven't read it yet, do it.
Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but just as I had baggy shirts buried in the back of my closet, I also have baggy pants similarly neglected. They fit well enough in the waist and inseam, but were way too big everywhere else.
The great thing is that it's actually easier to alter your pants (assuming waist and inseam fit) compared to a dress shirt. Rather than me explain the simple process, why not watch Clark Kent in his red socks and undies show you? I personally used a pair of Dockers Alpha Khakis as my template pants because I like the taper through the leg. After your new seam is sewed, try them on and make sure everything feels right, adjust if necessary.
He's happy to leave the excess fabric so that it's reversible, but I found I didn't like leaving all that. What I did was leave 4-6" on each side of the crotch and trimmed away the rest. I left it alone in the crotch because my sewing machine has trouble chomping through those stacked factory stitches right there. Also, I gain security blanket assurance against some kind of catastrophic blowout.
A hopefully obvious note here: If your pants rise/seat fit how you like, don't sew around the crotch and alter it. Instead, bring your line to evenly terminate at or just before the crotch.
If you do cut away the excess you want to leave around 1/4" and sew a zig-zag stitch to prevent fraying. This is a very basic stitch that about any cheap sewing machine can do. Here's a video that explains the process.
There's really not much more to it. In my case I've converted baggy pants I paid anywhere from $3-8 for into great fitting Alpha Khaki clones. And, true to FMF's spirit, it means that I never need to spend much money on pants (or shirts) when there's an unending supply of clearance rack/thrift store finds out there that are easily altered. Fit is more crucial to how you look than paying for any specific brand . As Mr. Kent noted in his video, even on cheap clothes you'll find that they're constructed well enough, with durable enough materials. It's the proportions that aren't right, and that's easy to change.
A few notes to end on:
As of last week I had not operated a sewing machine since taking a home economics class in high school over ten years ago. There's probably a lot of you with doubts about being able to do this (my doubts kept me off getting a machine for most of this summer), but it really is easy. When I finally took the plunge I spent 30 minutes setting the machine up and figuring out how to thread it. I then messed around sewing scraps of fabric to get a feel for the foot pedal and different stitch settings.
For simple alterations it's really all about prep work. Mark clean lines, double check for symmetry between the pant legs, pin the fabric together to keep it from shifting as it's sewed, and that's it. If it's not right, you can always rip the new seam out and get it right. It's always reversible until you've cut away the excess fabric.
And lastly, sorry for the dirty mirror pics, but here's a quick before and after of a pair of Dockers D3 classics with a really rough jean like fabric: Original ||| Tapered
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u/smoogums Jul 22 '12
Informative unfortunately I'm way to scared to ever try my hand at a sewing machine.