Let's do the limbo! How low can you go? Tutorial: Changing waistbands on jeans

Most of my family lives in Taiwan, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong. My reletives in HK and Taiwan like to buy me clothes, except well, frequently the measurements are wrong because they have to guesstimate by some numbers that my dad sends over every year. This usually results in clothing that are too large, or high waisted or not my style. Luckily, I've found a way to make the waistbands on jeans "lower". This means that if have you have a pair of jeans that are "mid- waisted" or "high- waisted", you can take them a bit lower, like 1 and a half inches. This is especially good as well, if you buy a pair of jeans from Macy's or something, and they fit your butt, thighs, legs, but not waist, becuase you can tailor the waistband to fit you.

This project is not for the meek! This is especially good if you are trying to make a new waistband to kick up a pair of pants, trying to make something fit your waist, or trying to make your pants a lower rise. I'm not going to teach you guys to make your jeans like 5 inches lower becuase that's some serious stuff right there. You have to move the pockets, cut off a substantial amount of cloth, move zipper etc. That's scary stuff right there.

Here's the original pair of pants:

Instructions:

1. First, take off the waistband. This isn't that hard actually. There's some thread holding it to the jeans and you just have to snip that and you'll find that the waistband comes off pretty easy. Underneath the waistband is just the jean pant part that has fraying stuff.

2. Now, you want to put in a new waistband that is lower than the original. You see the fraying edges? You just want to take some cloth, denim or not (whatever floats yo' canoe), and wrap it around the edges. If you don't understand, I have a picture below and lemme give you an analogy. You know when you have to tape together two edges of a piece of paper? How do you do that? You tape it together by putting half of the tape on one side and half on the other side right? It's the same concept, except you are "taping" the frayed edges down.

3. Be careful of the zipper. Try not to cover it too much. Now you have some space right? Put a hook- and- eye clasp there. They come in many different sizes and you can find them at a local craft store. I've put a link HERE. I chose not to use a button because then you have to make a button hole and those are seriously annoying.

4. I forgot to mention, save the belt loops. If you've thrown them away, just make some. Sew the belt loops back on, and if you want, put a li'l button on the front and you are fantasticlly good to go!

Final look: