Shopping for jeans is extremely frustrating. Finding a pair that perfectly accommodates your hips, waist, and leg length is next to impossible. And the thousand trips to a fitting room that has no locks (I’M LOOKING AT YOU, ROBINSON’S MALL, FUENTE!) don’t help the quest to find the ideal pair.

Because I’m short, I always have my jeans shortened at the mall. Yes, I could buy smaller, (hence, shorter) jeans, but my butt, hips, and waist have an aversion to size 24 jeans. Often, I end up buying a pair that’s perfect on the waist but baggy everywhere else. This is the case for the last three pairs I bought.

So I did some research on making jeans tighter. It seems that a hot wash and long drying time combo works perfectly. I have no access to a drier or washing machine. I turned to Lorelai for help.

1. Fit your jeans. Estimate how many inches tighter the legs should be.

…MORE

This is very easy. The difficult part is protecting your ripper and your sewing machine from the thick fabric.

The lucky pair of jeans that I reconstructed was this:

I bought this more than five years ago. It’s large not because I lost weight. It doesn’t fit me well because when I was still an undergrad I had no idea how to buy a pair of jeans that hugged my legs in all the right places.

TUTORIAL

…MORE