I suppose the subtitle for this post should be “or . . . what happens when you hem your jeans too short and need to fix them.” A couple of months ago, I bought a pair of Salt Works jeans at a local boutique, and though I loved the fit, they were way too long. I tried wearing them a couple of times, but even with my tallest boots on, the hems dragged on the ground and—an inevitability in the rainy Oregon winter—got soaking wet. In a hurry to wear them one day, I cut off the bottoms and thought I’d give them a quick hem. Well, turns out I was too hasty and didn’t follow my father’s old idiom: “Measure twice, cut once.”

So in an attempt to reconcile the situation, I decided to sew a new, decorative hem around the bottom. I sketched up this pattern on a piece of scrap paper:

It makes perfect sense to me . . .
Consulting my stash, I found some vintage upholstery fabric that I thought would hold up well. I particularly like the photo below. The fabric was laying below a window, tossed aside for the moment, and the sun fell through it just right.
So, about an hour later, I had one leg down, one to go. Knowing myself, it might be a few days before I get the other side completed. Making things in pairs is always somewhat tiring to me. I like the challenge of “figuring out” the first one, and by comparison, the second edition of whatever it is seems more rote, mechanical. But I do like how the first leg turned out; it’s not quite perfect, but nor is anything I sew.
Left leg, finished
Overexposed
One down, one to go