Adding cuffs to Jeans, a tutorial

Ok, so after my trip to the fabric market. I really was inspired!  Babes has entered her 6 yr old growth spurt and has grown an inch since last spring.  While this is awesome, it means that ALL of her pants are entirely too short.  But she has my kid body type, which means she's all leg and no center mass (*sigh* how that has changed!) so the waist on the pants are actually still really loose, but the hems are halfway up her legs.  I was on my way to buy new pants, when I said to myself, "self, these pants are still good, why buy new pants when you can jazz these old pants up?"

So I started with a pair of her old pants and some colorful fabric from the fabric market.  Deciding that just cuffs would be a little odd I took out my seam ripper and ripped out the back pockets and the hems of her jeans.  (I don't think either step is necessary, but ripping out the hem of the jeans added a bit of length to the bottom of the pants and made it easier to sew through).

Using the ripped off pockets as a guide,  cut out two pockets and two cuffs (Make them a little bigger than twice as long as you want the cuff). I sewed on the pockets first, but I forgot to take any pictures.  Basically you just pin, and sew them in the place of the old pockets.

Fold the cuff material in half and sew a seam across the top, to hold the material together. Turn the jeans inside out and pin the cuffs onto the jeans with most of the material toward the knee.  Then, sew the cuffs at the point of the newly opened hem.  Don't forget to sew closed the cuffs before you turn the jeans right side out.

Turn the jeans right side out and decide where you want the cuffs to fall, you want to make sure you cover the seam you just made, but also have the cuffs long enough to make the pants fit right.  To be sure of this, I just did a quick stitch and had Babes try on the pants before stitching the cuffs on more securely with an invisible stitch.

And you're done!  Babes now has a pair of pants that fit reasonably well, AND they look pretty different from the way they looked before.  (If you look closely you can see how long she's been wearing the pants, there are several seam lines from when the pants were shorter, it's almost like rings on a tree)