Boot Happy Jeans!

Welcome to November! It seems like summer stretched on particularly long this year, keeping us in lightweight clothes and sock-less shoes right up until Halloween.  We Iowans like to talk about the weather, and sometimes it might sound like we are complaining, but I think deep down we all know the truth: we have it the best! Here in Iowa, we get to experience all four seasons, each one intense and beautiful, and each one taking just a liiiiittle bit too long to arrive. Each season is a welcome reprieve from the one before it, like a cup of cocoa after a romp in the snow, a cool drink of water after a long jog, a comfy couch after a hard day’s work. Each new season’s arrival is a whirlwind of cleaning, packing up, rearranging, shopping, and preparing for what’s to come: New clothes! New foods! New coffee creamer! New music! New candle scents! New sports! New footwear!

Which brings me to my personal favorite part of the fall season: boots. You know what I like about boots? Where do I begin? They dress up my standard jeans attire. They are comfortable and functional. They keep the bottom of my pants from getting dirty and soggy. Mostly, they just make me feel awesome.

Now I’ll admit, I’m not a huge skinny-jeans convert most of the time. I haven’t quite figured out how to wear the right shoes with skinny jeans, probably because I have skinny chicken legs paired with very large feet. Slip-on shoes work fine, but what about when I want to wear socks? Why does it always look weird to wear shoes with skinny jeans? I don’t have the answer to that, but boots solve this dilemma beautifully, just one more redeeming attribute of this remarkable footwear. I think we can all agree: skinny jeans and boots are a match made in heaven. You don’t have to stuff your baggy pantlegs down into your boots, or deal with the discomfort of wads of denim pushing into your ankles, or figure out how to fashionably roll up your jeans so that they lay smooth and straight(it can’t be done). But if you’re like me, and you don’t feel like replacing all your time-tested, perfectly broken-in jeans and going out to buy new skinny jeans, then this tutorial is for you. You don’t have to have any sewing skills at all; this project is perfect for the beginner.

TUTORIAL: How to turn your baggy-bottomed jeans into Boot Happy Jeans!

What you’ll need:

• A pair of jeans that fit great in the waist, hips, and thighs, but are too baggy around the calf and ankle
• A sewing machine
• Thread that matches your denim (doesn’t need to be a perfect match)
• Safety pins
• A fabric marker or any light washable marker
• Scissors
• A seam ripper, just in case!

What to do:

1. Turn your jeans inside out, and put them on.

2. Along the outside seam of your jeans (on the outer side of your leg), squeeze any extra fabric together at the point in your leg where it starts to be too baggy. Find the place where you can squeeze about an inch of fabric without stretching the material too tightly, and start there. You’re going to squeeze the front and back of your pant leg together with your hand, keeping the outside seam smack in the middle on the outer edge so that the front and back parts of your pant leg will get trimmed evenly.

3. With a fabric marker (or any marker that is washable and won’t soak through to the other side), make a mark at the beginning of the baggy part.

4. Squeeze the fabric together, down the seam, making a few marks as you go. At the ankle, decide how tight or loose you want it to be, and make a mark. Remember you have to fit your foot through!

5. Take the jeans off, and pin the fabric together along the marks you made. Use safety pins, and run them vertically along the new seam line.

6. With the jeans still inside out, and all pinned down the new seam line, try them on and see if the fit is how you want it. (If it’s not, make adjustments and try again.)

7. If the fit is good, take the pins off and sew a straight line up the leg, starting at the ankle mark and working your way up to your first mark. If you want an exact line to follow, go ahead and draw the whole line in with your fabric marker.

8. When you get to the top mark, veer off in a smooth line until you meet up with the original side seam.

9. Turn your jeans right side out, and try them on to see how it turned out!

10. When you’re happy with how it looks, you can trim the extra fabric off with a scissors. If the seam at the ankle sticks out and bothers you, you can fold it over and sew it down flat, but that’s optional.

11.Put on your awesome new boot-happy skinny jeans, pull on your boots, pat yourself on the back, and go get yourself a pumpkin spice latte to enjoy this fine fall season!

Happy Fall, mamas! Let me know if you try out this tutorial! And if you fashionable ladies have any tips for how to wear skinny jeans with shoes, feel free to drop some knowledge on me!