Tag Archives: clothing

How to Sew your Skinny Jeans

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One of the great surprises of starting a blog is seeing which posts become popular. I wrote previously about how I fold my skinny jeans, and this has become by far the most popularly viewed single post of Hipster House Husband.

“Why?” you ask? Yeah, I’ve asked myself that question a lot. The best answer that I can come up with is that people see the way hipsters cuff or roll the bottom of their jeans, and they want to learn how to do that. Now, I don’t mean to sound too stereotypically hipster, but for the record, I’ve been cuffing my jeans for the past 15 years. That’s right: before it was cool. For the life of me, I don’t know why you’d have to do a google search (or bing, if you’re that kind of hipster) just to find out how to fold the bottom of your jeans.

I was reflecting on such ponderances last night as I spent some time repairing a tear in one of my favorite pairs of jeans. My wife has been telling me for weeks that I need to stop wearing these jeans since there is a big tear in the butt area, but while I’m standing no one can see it. I didn’t want to have to buy new jeans just because of a little extra ventilation. Eventually this tear became big enough to demand my attention, which brings me to last night. In between loads of laundry I pulled out my wife’s sewing kit. One thing about being married to a highly trained ballet dancer: you always have a needle and thread laying around. You just have to dig through the pointe shoe elastics.

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My sewing skills are far from world class, but I’d rather add an ugly seam in an unseen area than throw away an otherwise perfectly good pair of pants. After I frankensteined the tears back together, I threw them into the wash. They came out of the wash just fine, and after following my particular folding method, they were ready to go back into the rotation.

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As a matter of fact, I’m wearing them right now.

 

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How to Fold your Skinny Jeans

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I have a particular way I fold my skinny jeans.

Okay…to be honest, I don’t wear skinny jeans. I also don’t wear V-Necks. Even so, I think my Credentials as a Hipster remain intact. I would even dare to say that this obligatory uniform of the contemporary nonconformist is not as obligatory as you would think.

There are exceptions to every rule. In the case of the skinny jeans, a hipster’s leg wear only need be skinny enough to be able to see the silhouette of an iPhone in the pocket of his/her choice. In the case of v-necks, they are only necessary if you have enough curious chest hair to peak out the V. I meet both exceptions: having the iPhone clearly visible and a lack of any chest hair (curious or otherwise).

But back to folding laundry. I’ve toyed with different ways to fold my jeans over the years, but have recently struck gold in terms of folding methods. What makes a folding method good? I have three basic criteria:

  1. Keeps clothes from wrinkling/unfriendly creasing in storage.
  2. Highlights the innate features of the material.
  3. Makes the garment easy to store.

So here’s my method:

IMG_2489I start by folding them lengthwise with the seams together, similar to the way I would hang a pair of slacks. Then I tuck in the zipper and the butt so that I get a mostly straight line up and down.

IMG_2490 Fold that in half.

IMG_2491 Fold that in half again. All done.

This nice square shape fits nicely into my closet, prevents any wrinkles from storage, and even gives a faux crease look along the front of my pants. My little piece of original denim origami isn’t really a big deal, but it helps me keep my hipster/house husband sides together and happy.