 Hi, you guys. Lindsay here. Welcome back to my channel, Inside to Him. So if you've been following me for a while, you know that I'm still on the struggle bus when it comes to sewing pants. I just cannot get the fit right on most any pants pattern. The more fitted the pants pattern is, the worse it is for me. It takes me so much time to end up with something that's worse than what I can find in stores. So for now, I'm still buying my jeans, but I am buying them from Goodwill. So and today I want to share with you my best tip for buying pants second hand and making sure that they fit for my body shape. It's best if I buy jeans that fit my butt and thighs and then alter them to fit my waist. If you have more of an apple shape, it would be better for you to fit to find pants that fit in your waist and then altering them to fit your butt and thighs. Taking apart a jeans waistband and altering it at the center back or side seams is really a pain and it takes forever. I have come up with a quick and dirty method that takes less than an hour and is easy to adjust as you gain or lose weight. Let me show you how I do it. Okay, so first things first on this, you need to unpick with your seam ripper, starting at the side seam and then unpick, I don't know what is that, like four or five inches on each side of your jeans. So we've got the waistband is attached on the front and then when you flip it to the inside, the facing of the jeans is what I have unpicked, allowing me to access the tunnel of the waistband. And I want to point out that in order to do that, I had to remove this name plate that was on here because it was sewn through all the layers. I am going to try and get that back on there. I just don't know with my home sewing machine if I'm going to be able to sew through all of this leather, but we will see how that goes. I'm pretty sure if I can't do it at home, I could take it to like a cobbler, like a shoe person. They have industrial leather type machines and they might be able to get it back on, or maybe even like a regular alteration shop. So we'll see what I can do here with what I've got, but there are other resources. Okay, so once you've done that, you need to determine how much you need to take out from your waistband. So I did that on my own already. I pinched it closed like so along the center back while I was wearing the pants and I was pinching it just outside of these belt carriers. So I'm going to, it's kind of an estimate in the beginning and you'll see how we will perfect that measurement here shortly. But you measure that and I'm getting like right around one and a half inches. So double that because we've got this doubled over. So that is going to be three inches. Our waistband, I'm going to measure half of the waistband from the side seam here all the way to the center back here. And I'm getting a measurement of what is that, 10 inches. So double that because we've got double a waistband and that is going to give us a 20 inch back waistband measurement. And I need to remove three inches of that. So my elastic is going to be cut to approximately 17 inches. So measure your elastic along your ruler or your cutting mat or whatever you're using. And we're going to add half an inch of seam allowance for either side. So I've got a measurement of 18 inches here. So now you're going to take your elastic. I've got this really cool elastic threader. I will have a link in the description box for where you can get one of these. It's awesome for projects like this way, way better than the safety pin because it's so long. And we have a center back seam here in our waistband that we are going to be trying to push through. So it's a lot easier with, you know, a pointy hard plastic long tool like this. But anyways, you just feed your elastic through the back. You can tell how powerful the grip is on this threader. It is not letting go, which is one of the other things I really love about it. Okay, so you pull it so you've got your elastic coming out of each end of the back of your jeans or your pants. And I'm going to secure this with my seam allowance sort of where I want it to end with a safety pin. We need it to be a lot stronger than a straight pin because we're going to be tugging on this a little bit more. So just make sure you catch your elastic in the safety pin. So yeah, I've got it going through all the layers and the elastic. And on the other side, you remove this guy and do the same thing. Find your side seam. There we go. Find your side seam, tuck the elastic up into the waistband and secure it with a safety pin again. Like so. Now we've got to put them back on and assess how they fit. More often than not, I end up having to take it in even more. But it's easier to do that on your body than to keep like guessing at the measurements. So let's do that. Okay, so now I've got them back on. And you want to make sure too that you're wearing the shoes that you plan on, a shoe that's similar anyways, because that's going to affect how they fall from your hips. So you can see we've got the waistband and it's still a little bit too loose. So reach around, grab one of the safety pins and remove it. But obviously make sure you hold on to your elastic like so. And then just give it a giant tug until it pulls itself up to you all the way around. So you can see I pulled out a good like six inches probably. And just make sure that it's it feels good and that it's like I said, hugging you kind of all the way around. And that you're still comfortable, you know, you don't want it to be like, I don't know, holding you in so bad. So okay, so once you've got that in place, put your safety pin back in so that you can take these off. And we can officially secure our elastic. Okay, so once you take them off again, you can see we've got one side secured over here. And then we have removed a bunch of this elastic from the other side. And when you pull it tight, you can see that how the elastic is kind of working in there. Okay, so you need to handle this kind of one side at a time. Remove your safety pin. And you know that this is in line with the side seam. So take it over to your machine and sew it into the facing. So you are going to be able to see these stitches from the outside. It's going to be a single row of stitches right here kind of in line with your side seam. So it's kind of obvious, kind of not, I'm going to use a navy thread. So it blends a little bit more. I'm just using a straight pin to secure this now, since I'm not putting it on and wearing it and stuff. And then you open this up, and you should be able to stitch right along your side seam, which is this area here right through here, stitch back and forth a couple of times to hold it in place. And then once you're done with that, you simply flip your facing back down, and then top stitch that closed. And it'll be easier to do whenever you don't have the pins in and stuff. Then come to the other side and do the exact same thing. So I'll show you what I've got when I'm done doing all of that sewing. All right, the jeans are all done. You can tell that along the front of the waist band, they still look nice and flat and just like your regular jeans. And then when you flip it to the back, you can see you've got like a bit of a gathering situation going on. Now when I put these on, they do stretch out a little bit more. So the gathering isn't so obvious. And if you remember from what these looked like before, I had, I mean, three inches to take in, which is a lot. Not all jeans that I buy need three inches. A lot of times it's like one or two. And so the fewer, the less you need to take it in, the less gathering this will end up looking. And I might try and get this guy back on again too. Although with all of this, yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna try. I'll let you know how it goes. I did it. I got it. I got it back on there. And considering I am sewing through two layers of denim interfacing and now that elastic, I think I did pretty good. So I had gold topstitching thread for the waistband. And so I used that for the outside. And then I had just regular polyester thread on the bottom. And there's a little bit of, I don't know, elastic, I think, popping through. But that's okay. I'm really happy with this. So let me put these on and show you what they look like. And there you have it, the quickest, simplest way to alter a denim waistband. You can see the before and after side by side. I love how these jeans fit. And when I wear my top or sweater untunked, you can't even see the waistband. So no one knows it's gathered in the back. And if I gain or lose weight, which I tend to do, I can unpick one side of the waistband and tighten or loosen the elastic as needed. If your weight fluctuates a lot like me, tuck in a couple extra inches of elastic into the waistband so you have something to work with in the future. Here's another pair I recently did. These are more fitted through the thigh. And the waistband isn't as big to start as the first pair. But you can see the elastic trick still works. So if you have a hard time finding jeans or pants that fit in the stores, give this little trick a try. But that's going to do it for me today. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up. And if you're not subscribed already, please do so. I have a lot of tips and tricks like this coming your way. But I'll see you all very soon. Thanks again for watching. Bye.