Jalie jeans with attitude

I got busy over the weekend and made myself a new pair of Jalie jeans (Jalie 2908). I have made variations of these jeans before as skinny cargos and skinny denims. I like the skinny style at the moment so I stayed with that for this latest pair. However, to add a bit of interest, I inserted zip detailing and horizontal seams above the knee. My inspiration was this pair of jeans from Country Road.

I used red stretch denim for the jeans, which I got on sale for $5/metre at Homecraft Textiles. So these jeans cost me just over $10. I blended a size S Jalie jeans to a size W above the hip. In hindsight this was probably too big as the denim is pretty stretchy and is not fitting quite as smoothly as I would like.

I added a centimetre or so to the length of the front and just folded and stitched to make the seam above the knee. Then I assembled the jeans as usual except that I only finished the inside leg seam below the horizontal knee seams, leaving the crotch seam open. Next I finished the outside leg seams and inserted the zips before finishing the crotch seam. This just made it easier to sew the zips.  I inserted the zips according to this very simple method by 'A lemon squeezy home'.

I put two zips on the right side and one on the left. At the back of the zips I sewed a piece of fabric the same size as the zip facing to make a kind of pocket and to stop the zip poking and being uncomfortable. The inside of the zips looks like this (the checked fabric is the front pocket lining.

Apart from being slightly too big, I'm pretty chuffed with these. Those zips really give me the attitude that I'm lacking in these photos, right??