Jeans Sewalong: Week 2

Week two of the jeans-along has come to a close and our jeans are starting to take shape. The zippers have started to go in, the fronts are getting finished and we are even starting to move on to the back side of the pants. Here is what the ladies accomplished this week.

Jaime's Ginger Jeans: Week 2

Day 2 of sewing jeans! Whew. We jumped right into it with these jeans and constructed the pocket stays and front pockets as well as the fly zipper on day 1 of sewing. This is the number one reason I love an "along," getting to sew with my peers and figure things out together. I've never sewn pocket stays the way these are constructed for view B. There are a lot of un-intuitive steps that include "right sides facing up" etc. You really have to just follow the directions and trust that it will all turn out in the end. It did! The pockets are neatly lined and will be held in place with the waistband and fly.

I have sewn a fly zipper before on my first jeans attempt. I'm not sure if that helped or if it was the well-written instructions, or having Sara by my side telling me what to do, but it came together surprisingly well! It looks amazing. There's a tiny hiccup in my top-stitching, but I opted not to rework it and will just hope people aren't going to look that closely at my fly. This was a great stopping point for the day - next week will be the moment of truth when we get to try them on!

Sarah's Ginger Jeans: Week 2

This week we finally got into the sewing! It's always exciting when you get to see your garment start to take a recognizable shape. We started out this week by setting up a serger and a top stitching machine for everyone to share. The top stitching machine was set up with the thicker gold thread in top and regular black thread in the bobbin. We set the stitch length to 3.5 again and I ran a few test stitches to double check that everything was working the way we wanted it to. Honestly, I test my stitches every time I reset the machine or set it up for a new task. It's worth the extra minute of my time to save myself from ripping out stitches later.

The first thing we had to sew was the pocket stays. This was my first time sewing pocket stays. I was kind of confused by the instructions at first because my pocket fabric does NOT have a clear inside or outside to it. But, looking at the diagram I was able to figure out how to assemble it. I chose to do a French seam on the bottom of my pocket stays because I love doing French seams and have had a LOT of practice with them. You also have the option of just serging the seam allowance instead.

Once the pocket stays were sewn, it was time for the ZIPPER FLY (duh-duh-dunnnnn). The instructions for the fly are pretty good, just make sure you follow them exactly as written, and your fly should be fine and functional. If you need additional help there is a very thorough tutorial with photographic instructions on the Stitches & Seams blog. Zipper flies do take a lot of time and patience so don't rush this step. After the fly was inserted and all the top stitching done, I sewed my back yokes to my back legs and top stitched the seam. And that was all the sewing we did! I feel like it doesn't sound like much, but it actually is a LOT of sewing. I'm predicting we'll all be close to finished if not completely finished next week.

 Kaylee's Ginger Jeans: Week 2

Let me just tell you this sew-along seems to be flying by! I feel like we will be done with these jeans in no time. I always imaged that jeans would take hours and hours of work (the way a coat does), but it hasn't been like that at all. That being said, I'm not quite as far along as the other two are.

I finished constructing my pockets and pocket stays and started to put my zipper in. I have one side totally in, but I seem to have run into a problem on when attaching the second side of the zipper. I couldn't figure out exactly what I did wrong, but I discovered the problem pretty late in the day and decided to wait and look at it with fresh eyes. I'm hoping that next week I can figure out what went wrong with a little bit of troubleshooting and a clear mind. As you all know, sometimes when you are sewing things just don't go your way and I have found that the best course of action is to just walk away for a little bit.

I'm super eager to finish up my (nerve-racking) zipper fly top stitching and start working on the fit of these jeans, which I suspect we will start next week. It's always exciting when things start to take their final shape and this week these actually started to look like jeans!