Slinking down to Knoxville

When Miriam bought a pair of black slinky pants on sale at Chico’s I initially thought “no problem”.  After all, the kind of double needle hem that came on the pants is an easy thing to sew, how hard could it be to shorten the pants?  Hard no.  Time consuming yes.

Initially I thought the pants looked so good on Miriam that I would willingly run out and buy her more whenever they came on sale and shorten them for her, now that I know the inseam length.  That was before I realized that I had to take the existing hem out before shortening the pants.  Obvious I know.  But I’ve been known to walk right on past the obvious without even noticing.

The first time I tried to pick out the tiny black stitches from the ribbed black slinky fabric I thought my head was going to explode and my eyes were going to burst out of my head like cannonballs.  Of course I had a headache and sinus infection at the time.  Delay seemed the sanest option.

Even with a clear head, seeing the stitches was difficult.

They look pretty good here don’t they? By carefully positioning the brightest (and hottest) halogen lamp in the house just so, the stitches seemed quite evident. Piece of cake I thought…

until I turned that edge up and tried to actually see the individual stitches hidden in that cushy slinky fabric. Believe me, I saw no more than you do in the above photo. There is a vague shadow of a stitch across the blade.

 Talk about tedious and time consuming work…2 hours later the old hems were out.

 That accomplished, it only took about 10 minutes to sew the new hems. I shall subject you to the boring hem shot:

I realize now of course that making slinky pants would take no more time, and probably less, than ripping out that hem.  The construction of these is quite simple. I traced the pants to make a basic pattern before I shipped them down to Tennessee.

 

Comments

[cyphunk]

... (in relation to my last post) the reason I ask about tracing a pattern is because I imagine a great deal can be learned about shaping by doing this.

[cyphunk]

in a post after this one you mention how sewing is boring to most. I just wanted to say that I find it interesting. Not everyone reading your blog is a seamstress. I'm an engineer in fact. I follow your blog because my girl friend is a seamstress by hobby. When trying to show her interesting resources on techniques online I came across your blog and became interested myself. In fact, I think I read your blog more than she does.

I've digressed. The point I wanted to make was that even something simple as you describe in this post here is interesting to me. Even more, you mentioned you traced a pattern. Perhaps if you have time you could show how you went about this.

[Mardel]

Alas, I hoped I could just cut the old hem off, but I needed to shorten them just enough to be a pain.

[Liana]

Are you shortening them enough that you could just cut off the old hem? That would sure speed things up!