Boot-cut to Skinny

Goodbye 2008. Hello 2014. 

Boot-cut. Flare. We all still have them in our closets. Some of them are still in pretty good shape, too. But wouldn't you love to be able to transform a couple of them (like that one pair with the awesome dark wash, or the ones with the cute back pockets) into skinny jeans?!?

GOOD NEWS!! You can!! And it's oh-so easy. 

I transformed a pair of mine this morning, but I didn't take pictures of the before-jeans. But I was so excited to share, I dug out some of my daughter's jeans and put together this simple tutorial.

First choose the jeans you are changing. Turn them inside out and flatten the legs so either the inseam or outseam is visible and flat. Here the outseam is visible. I chose to do the outseam on these because I wanted to take out some width all the way up to the pockets.  I took the width from the inseam on my jeans because they were already plenty tight in my thighs. :)

Next, lay a pair of skinny jeans that fit you well over the boot-cut jeans. Line up either the inseam or the out seam (inseam is lined up here).  

Cut away the extra width, allowing for a 1/4 inch seam when you sew. I didn't pin much because jeans are heavy and these were little 3T's. But for larger jeans, you may want to pin along the cut line and/or mark it with chalk before  you cut.

Now sew up the open seams, Be sure to make a smooth transition from the original seam to the new one you are making so you don't have any funny little bumps. 

My little model in her "new" skinny jeans.

I had to sneak one of her cute skinny-jean backside. Three-year-olds pull off the skinny-jean look best. Definitely better than 30-somethings do.