How to Take in the Waist on Jeans/Pants - Make Waistband Smaller

hey there i'm danny truster from trester taylor in rochester minnesota this is taylor yourself in this video i'm going to show you how to take the waist in on a pair of jeans or other casual style pant this is going to help to bring the waist in without changing the way that the seat and the hips fit to take in the waist you'll need a couple of things you'll want some thread that matches what's on the waistband and the belt loops a scissors some tailor's chalk a cutting blade or a seam ripper to take off the belt loops in the waistband any nippers or a small scissors and a ruler some other larger items that you're going to need are an ironing board an iron with some steam and a sewing machine the first thing you're going to want to do is remove the belt loops or anything that's attaching the waistband and the pant together you don't need to take the belt loops all the way off you just need to remove them at the top of the waistband if you don't do this because the position of the waistband is going to be different when we're done you'll get them some of them that are at an angle and the center of the seam in the back is where we're going to be making our seam to take the waistband in so you'll for sure need to remove that one to remove those you could use a cutting blade like i have here or a seam ripper whatever you're most comfortable with i like a razor blade because it's a little faster you just want to again remove it at the top and just the back three you don't need to remove the ones in the front and we're also going to remove this label it's up to you whether you want to put any tags or labels back on this one is made out of paper and it's kind of flimsy and it's already ripped so i'm just going to leave it off but if you have a nice leather patch or something that has branding on it that you'd like to keep you're welcome to put that back on at the end or if there's a lot of discoloration underneath this one has a little bit it's a little bit darker a lot of times when you remove that patch if you want to keep that from being visible you can put the patch back on but again the pant is going to be shifted a little bit from the waistband so it may not matter anyway so this one i'm just going to get rid of it you also want to clean up your threads and make sure those are taken off of there before you put it back on because it's going to be a lot harder to remove that when you have sewn it back down now that we have our threads cleaned up we're going to flip our pants inside out this will give us easier access to the inside and we've got a couple more labels here i'm going to remove those as well this other label here is off center and it's not going to affect where our seam is so i'm just going to leave that one on there so when we take this in we're going to take the waistband most of the way off from the one front belt loop all the way around to the other one and you kind of want to stop right before these rivets here that gives us plenty of space to take in the amount that we've marked in our fitting video if you haven't watched that video and you're curious on how to mark to take the waste in i recommend going back and watching that before you start taking everything apart so a lot of times a jean waistband will be chain stitched this means that the thread is sewn in a loop so once you start it you can sort of pull the rest of it out and it makes taking the waistband apart a lot easier it's a little bit of a trick to know how to do it but once you do know it makes things go a lot quicker but you can also pick them by hand if you can't really quite figure out how to get that started if you look at the back side of your thread you can see that there's kind of loops it's more than just one thread that's in there and that's kind of your indicator that it's been chain stitched and you can also see the top of the waistband has that as well typically chain stitch waistbands go from left to right so what we'll do is and this is again is our front rivet that's our starting point we're gonna just kind of nip our one of those threads and then we're also going to nip our stop point because once you start pulling and the whole thing comes out it's easy to go past the point where you want to stop so before we start pulling we'll also nip our stopping point so then we'll go back to the left side of it and if you can see how we're going to do this here where we snipped there we'll go to the next full loop and if we pull the top portion we can see that that little leg comes off of there and we're going to want to take that leg sometimes you got to lift the rest of it you can see how there was that little loop there and you can see that we can pull that whole thing out there if you find that you get stuck or that it won't come you can kind of clip that next one and should be able to keep pulling it and you want to remove that all the way around until we get to our other stop point which again was before this rivet here so now if we go to the outside of the waistband we can pull it put our nippers in there and grab that and the whole thing should come off on its own and we'll just nip it off the stop start point and nip that off the stop point and now our waistband is free from the rest of the pants so here we have our center back and that's where we've marked it to take it in we also want to remove the top stitching the chain stitching off of the top of the waistband we don't need to go all the way around we can just do the very part that we're taking in there this is going to allow us to open it up and make a seam so just maybe about an inch or two past where the markings are you'll want to again nip the start point and the stop point and then go back to the left side this one doesn't want to come apart very easily i guess this is also to demonstrate that you don't have to do the chain stitch you can kind of just pick it by hand too and the reason why that's happened is because they've stitched it instead of going this way the chain stitch is going that way so that's one thing you can look at if you're having trouble getting it started one way it may be because it's supposed to go the other direction so you can see how this little tail here is comfrey just pull on that and the rest of it comes away all right so now we're ready to mark and measure and sew the seam on the waistband one thing i like to do before i start measuring is snip the center back where we're going to make our seam i like to put a snip there that way i know exactly where the center is so when i make my seam it's not going to be off center when i put it back on so now we're going to want to measure and transfer our marks for how much to take the waistband in this one measures pretty much exactly an inch and a half so what we'll do is open up our waistband and we can kind of see where our center is because we have that cut there we'll fold it in half on that snip and then mark three quarters of an inch because three quarter three quarters of an inch is a half of inch and a half and because we're going to be sewing this on the fold we'll only need to measure for half of what our full total measurement is and one other thing that i like to do before i start sewing is put some pins where the folds are there are certain wear lines along the waistband that i want to try to line up as best as possible to avoid the lines getting off center because it sort of shifts as you sew it i like to put a pin at the top of the waistband there which helps hold it a little bit better you can see it's going to be lined up once we get that sewn so now we'll take it over to the sewing machine and sew the center seam on our waistband the first thing you want to do is set up your machine with a thread that you're going to use to sew your waistband down for this portion it's not so important that you have a color that matches exactly because it'll be on the inside the waistband and won't be visible but you're going to have to set it up anyway eventually so you might as well put it on now so that you're ready to go when we sew the waistband back on the color that you use for the bobbin doesn't matter so much because it's going to be on the inside of the pants and on the inside of the waistband so it's not super crucial that you get that matching exactly as you would on the outside for the stitch length i would use something that's about a medium length you don't want it too long that if you put any pressure on it that it'll split the waistband you don't want anything too small that you're going to sew in one spot and if you need to take it apart it's going to be really hard to take it apart so for me i usually go about three three and a half that refers to millimeters on my machine every machine is a little bit different but not too long not too short so we've got our waistband here and we've got it measured again three quarters of an inch which will be an inch and a half total because this is on the fold so we'll just insert that under the machine and sink our needle and we're going to sew forward a little bit and backward to secure the end and then we'll just sew in a straight line along the length of the waistband as i'm sewing that i'm also trying to line up the lines on the waistband so that when we flip it back over all these lines line up and we can see that we put a pin on the center one there and that one lines up really great and these other two match pretty well so i think we've done a good job trying to get that lined up so what we'll want to do after this so that we can press it flat and get it laying nice and smooth is cut along the rest of our fold here if you're taking these in a fair amount you'll want to snip some of that i would say leave about an inch maximum on either side if you leave too much in there it can get a little bit bulky but you want to leave a little extra so that if you ever want to make adjustments there's some fabric in there so yeah this one's an inch and a half so that is plenty that we could just leave in there the next thing we'll do is press this flat and fold the waistband back together so that we can put it back on the rest of the pants once you're at the ironing board you just want to take your iron and use the steam to press this seam flat that we've just made and then we'll want to fold the waistband back to its original shape so we can sew it back on the rest of the pants so if you follow the wear lines that were on there previously it'll give you a pretty good indication of where you need to go sometimes you need to adjust it just a little bit because you want to make sure it's the same shape so when we sew this back on we'll sew all the layers together and if something's a little bit off you may not catch it all the way it's important that you maintain the original shape so now that the waistband is pressed back into shape we'll take it back over to the sewing machine and sew it on the rest of the pants before we put the waistband back on we're going to need to do a little bit of preparation one thing we'll do is sew the tops line of stitching that was on the top of the waistband back on and i also got this inside label i'll put that back on as well for the rose stitching on the top of the waistband it's a different color than the bottom of the waistband so i'm just going to switch that out real quick so that they match now that i've got the proper thread color on i'm going to stitch the top of the waistband i'm also going to increase the stitch length on my machine because the jean stitching is a little bit wider so i'm just going to turn it to the maximum that my machine will go so i just went past the existing thread a little bit so that it'll secure that chain stitching and then we'll put our label back on and i'll just off center it from where the seam was kind of like how the other label is and if you want to get real fancy you could switch the thread color again this one is black i could put black on there but it's not too big a deal so i'm just going to keep this gold color on and i just go back and forth a time or two to secure that now i'm going to put back on the light gray thread which was the color that's used to sew on the bottom of the waistband your jeans might be all one color so you wouldn't have to worry about switching it or if you don't care what color is on there you can just put whatever you like but i'm trying to make this match as close to the original as possible to sew the waistband back on i like to do this in halves if you start at one end and go all the way to the other in one go there's a good chance you're going to get it off center and one side is going to be a little more full than the other so to avoid that and to keep it proportional i start the center back and go forward and then work from the other side so we'll take the center seam of our waistband and line it up with the center back on the bottom part of the pants and then we'll lay that under the machine and this can be a little bit of a thick part so i like to walk the needle through that just in case it catches on something i don't want to break a needle so if we look at our waistband here you can see that there is a bit more of the bottom part of the pants than there is on the waistband it's probably about a good inch inch and a quarter extra on the bottom part than there is on the waistband we've just taken in so what we're going to do is as we sew this back on we're going to pull the waistband and then sort of scoot in a little bit more of the bottom part it's called easing in so that we when we get to the end there's no wrinkles or tucks or pleats everything lines up it's just that there's a little bit more fullness on the bottom than there is on the waistband but if we do this correctly it'll lay nice and smooth all right so as we go again we're going to pull the waistband and then we'll pull the waistband this way and then sort of push with our other hand so that this gathers in you don't want to do it so much that you get little tucks in there we want to lay nice and smooth but you'll just sew forward a couple of inches and then reassess and relay the fabric and again just pull the waistband and push the bottom part forward and you can always sink your needle when you get to a stopping point so that if you're pulling on things it doesn't shift around at all and this will be easier harder depending on how much stretch there is in the fabric if there's a lot of stretch it's going to be a lot easier to pull that waistband to get the rest of it back in it's a very stiff denim like a raw denim this is going to be a little bit trickier and you're gonna be limited in how much you can take it in and again you want to line up the waistband you can see where the old wear lines are from where they used to lay and we're almost to the rivet our end point here and you can see it's already laying pretty flat so we just want to keep it taut and line everything up going little bits at a time and then kind of walk it over that rivet part it might be a little tough and then just go back a couple of stitches and there we have the one side sewn on but if you look over the waistband you can see it's laying nice and flat there's no wrinkles or tucks anywhere and that's exactly what we want to see there may be a couple threads from the inside of the waistband that peek out but you can just snip those off and then we'll snip our threads from where we started and then we'll go to the other side of the waistband and we'll start at the rivet and then work our way towards the center back and again just go forward a couple of stitches and then go back and get get everything lined up you can pull the waistband towards you and push the bottom forward a little bit go a few inches and then re-align pull the waistband and push the bottom part away from you and again we're almost to our stopping point at the center back so just want to keep making sure everything's lined up pulling the waistband so i just want to point something out to you i could feel as i was sewing that i could notice that the lump underneath was going away and that's because the back side of the waistband has gone out of alignment so we've sort of gone off that so if we would have left that this part of the waistband wouldn't have been sewn down so i'm going to take that apart and go back to about where this belt loop was and re realign that if you find that you've gotten off track somewhere you can always take it apart and start over since we're working on fabric and that leather you know you can you can make those mistakes you can put holes in things and it's not noticeable so we're just going to remove all our stitching and start that over again and i'm just kind of pulling this and making sure that both of these layers are laying together and you can kind of feel with your finger underneath here where the lip of that other layer is and there's they're lining up right now so and now we're approaching the thick part of the waistband so i'm just going to walk the needle over that so i don't break my needle and then i'm going to go back a couple of stitches to secure that and now the waistband is back on and if we look at that you should see that our it's off a little bit but the center seam of our waistband lines up pretty well with the center seam of the waistband and once we put our belt loop back on that seam will be covered up so if you do get off just a tiny bit it won't be noticeable but as long as everything is laying smooth and there's no tucks anywhere you can have a little bit of wiggle room so our for our belt loops like i said they're not going to be in the same spot they were previously because the waistband sort of shifted inside um so you want to kind of just get it so that it's perpendicular to the waistband if you try to line it up where it was before they're going to be kind of at an angle which you may like it's up to you how you want to do it but really they should be straight on kind of like that so once we have it lined up we'll put it back under the machine and then stitch over the top a couple of times and now we'll do the center back and we'll get that lined up there and our last one and now that everything is back together we'll take it back over to the ironing board and give it one final press so that everything lays nice and flat now we can turn the pants right side out and you want to place them on the edge of your board or whatever flat surface you're using let's give it a nice flat press surface and then you can just use the steam and the heat and the weight of the iron to flatten any stretched out parts get rid of any old remaining chalk marks just give it that nice final look that's nice and clean now that we've taken the waste in they're going to stay up on the waist where they're supposed to be and they're going to fit and feel a lot better for more information and courses including downloadable pdfs visit our website at tailoryself.com and always remember measure twice cut once thanks for watching

Channel: Tailor It Yourself

Views: 83,172

Keywords: take in waist, make waist smaller, alter waist on jeans, alter waist on pants, how to, tutorial

Id: FGwxiYZufjs

Length: 24min 13sec (1453 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2021