Jeans Sew Along.....came and gone....

Well I have completed my Jalie 2908 stretch denim jeans.

Sounds so anticlimatic. Where are the fireworks and confetti?

The celebration has been postponed. I am not sure how I feel about these jeans. I feel like a jilted sewer.

First off, I just don't have a Jalie body type (at least on my lower half). I went by my hip measurement which ended up being a size W, and traced that out. The legs looked way too slim. So I compared them to a pair of jeans that I wear and the legs WERE way to slim from the hip down to the knee. So I added to both inner and outer leg in this area. And still, I had to sew the pants with barely an 1/4" seam in this area and the legs are snug. I think I just have large quads. Could be from running, could be from cookies, brownies, cheetos, strawberry shortcake, etc.

While they are snug fitting all over, I think that the material is the real issue. It is a stretch denim from JoAnns, and I think it is too light weight. Snug jeans in a light weight denim make me feel like I am wearing a sausage casing. Lumpy and bumpy.

Snug jeans in a heavy denim are just more flattering, they have a much more smoothing effect..

My DH disagrees, thinks they look great. I am hoping they will grow on me. I have not hemmed them yet, want to wash and dry a few more times before hemming.

One thing I am pleased with is my back pockets! I love how they turned out. The closeup of the back pocket is the only picture that shows the actual color of my jeans. The rest I had to enhance to brighten them, and well...it made them appear blue!

For my back belt loop, I went with the crossover loop that cindyintampa shared in the Jeans Sew Along message board. I love it.

I also tried rivets this time. That was an adventure! RocketBoy suggested rivets from http://www.grommetmart.com/. I ordered them on Monday and they arrived on Thursday. Unfortunately, they did not come with a handyman to install them. I practiced with many on varying layers of denim out on the cold garage floor with my trusty hammer and vice grips. Almost everytime, the nail came through the front on the rivet. I finally ended up using nails from JoAnns rivets and Grommetmart's front part of the rivets. I used a snipper to snip the nails shorter and then pliers to reshape the now flattened nail head and then tried not exerting superhuman strength when compressing, and the nail head still came through, but I thought I could live with it. Then I tried the pants on.. and boing... there went two rivets across the room. So much for being hard to remove!!!

So this time, I snipped the nail heads even shorter and tried again. So far, so good. (-: We will see if they are still there after I wash and dry.

So now that I am done whining about these jeans, I feel better. Maybe I even like them a little bit more. (-: I guess, if all else fails, I can do it again, in a better quality denim and insert a little more strawberry shortcake room in the thigh area. Because for me, the making is more than half of the fun.

100.8 miles down

699.2 to go!

Rock On!