Alteration: Taking in the waist on children’s jeans

My kids are skinny! I have to use the elastic cincher on their pants to keep them from falling down. Well, since I’ve been altering all of our jeans lately, I’ve become fairly comfortable with the material.

So tonight I grabbed a pair of my sons jeans and decided I’d take in the waist so he wouldn’t have all of that bunching caused by the elastic tabs and excessive material. Note: when working with denim, remember to use a denim needle so that it goes through your material. Otherwise, you may (and will) break a regular sewing machine needle!

Here’s a pic of how he normally wears them…yes, we really do have to cinch them in THAT much!

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I unbuttoned the tabs and stretched the waist back out to its original state. I turned the jeans inside out and measured how much I needed to take in, then pinned.

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I sewed along my pins and cut off the excess. Do this on both sides of the waistband. You could actually take apart the seams to do this alteration; however, I’m a mother of 3 and really can’t find the time so just like all of my tutorials, this is the quick & easy way 🙂

Now, turn the jeans right side out and take a look! You can’t even tell they’ve been altered!

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I’ll be adding a pic of my son modeling the jeans tomorrow…the kids are already asleep as they have school in the morning.

UPDATE: I’ve added some much better pics of this process and pictures of my son wearing the jeans after I took in the waistline.

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3 thoughts on “Alteration: Taking in the waist on children’s jeans

  1. That really is a much better fit than the bunched up elasticy waist. I wish I would have done this when my kids were small!!!

  2. Will this work for the 6′ 8″ grandson who went from 320 to 265 and whose jeans are falling off? I sew a lot but have never altered jeans.

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