vintage green and black houndstooth wool trousers that need an alteration

Altering Vintage

Part of our business is to alter clothes for our customers. Some of these are straight forward, and others do take a little bit more time, like this vintage pair of wool trousers. It was dropped off at our studio with instructions attached. 

 

 green and black vintage houndstooth trousers with instruction note


vintage trousers measured up for alteration

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After some investigation we worked out how the alteration could be achieved. In this case we needed to gain 4 inches around the waist area. Usually this is quite a difficult alteration because there is rarely any excess fabric anywhere in a commercially made garment.

 

 

vintage trousers with waistband opened ready for an insert

 

 

This vintage piece was rather different as it had a lot of fabric hidden in a pleat and also some on the back seam which we could glean from.

 

 

vintage trouser waistband showing some of the fabric gained by unpicking the pleatvintage trousers showing fabric being gained at the waist by undoing two pleats

 

 

We did need to add something on the facing but that is a place not seen from the outside. Usually we are not that lucky.

 

 

pinning back the waistband on a pair of vintage trousersbeltloop pinned on vintage trouser waistband ready to be re-attached

 

 

We found that most of our time was spent carefully unpicking all relevant seams. That’s a job and half when you have a black thread used on green and black patterned wool cloth. All in all we think the alteration was a success! What do you think?

 

 

green and black vintage wool trousers after the alteration with tapemeasure showing the gained inches on the waist

 

 

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