The Making of a Perfect Pair (of Jeans)

I had been wearing my awesome jeans everyday, and now im going to share how I altered the Anita Pattern to make a pair of butt hugging and slightly flared jeans.

(note that all the pictures can be clicked on for full size)

Butt hugging

On the two leg pattern pieces, there is a line across the hip area: “shorten or lengthen here”. I folded along that line and took off a total of 2 inches (the fold was 1 inch tall). Note that I am only 4’11 tall while this pattern was made for someone 5’6&1/4 , so for the taller petite girls, you might want to take off LESS than that.

Knee and hip Hugging

One of the biggest complaint that Petite girls have against non-custom jeans is that while we can always hem away the long pant legs, the knee of the jean is located below our knee, so our legs are actually not looking any longer in those flare jeans. So I measured the distance between my crotch and where i like the jeans to be the skinniest (right above the knee cap) along the inseam of my legs (it was around 11.5 inches for me).  Then take the front leg piece and measure that distance from the dot shown (pick the dot for the size you have chosen to cut) along the inner seam, mark that on the paper. Mark the corresponding narrow-knee point on the other side of the piece by drawing a line that is perpendicular to the “straight grain” line.

Mark the corresponding line on the back leg piece by matching the ticks and marks on the pattern.

Next, measure the circumference of your knee right above your knee cap and that will be X (mine is 14.5 inches).

Use this formula:

Y = 1.25 + (X-2)/2    (my Y=7.5)

Z =1.25 + (X+2)/2 (my Z=9.5)

Y is how wide the knee part should be on the front leg pattern, Z is how wide the knee part should be on the back leg pattern (ignore the orange line here, just the green please).

Leg Flaring

First, make sure you have enough length on the leg. I used my inseam (crotch to floor with no shoes) + 7 inches — 3 inches for wearing this jean with heels and 4 inches for hemming and extra room for measuring mistakes (measure from the dot i mentioned before). I pasted a few pieces of paper to the back of the pattern since the leg i am about to draft is wider. Then add 2 inches to each side of the seam at the leg opening (note that I am a size 34, so I added 2 inches to the size 34 line)

now smooth it all out! draw a straight line between the end of the knee line and the leg opening. Smooth out the hip to knee end lines as well (look at green line!).

Waist raising

The last jean i made was a little low, so I got a little piling around the waist. Thus I added 1 inch above the waist band pieces.

This is my first time trying to demonstrate a how to. Hope it is clear enough. Leave me some feedbacks if you can! I also have some tips on making the jeans coming up 🙂