Maternity Jeans from Regular Jeans

I had never thought about altering regular pants into maternity until I saw the movie "Juno," in which Juno's mom alters her jeans to fit her daughter's ever growing belly. Taking a bit from each of them, I referred to instructions and tutorials from Grosgrain, Paisley Princess, and Megan Nielsen. I have just over 2 weeks until my due date and figure I should probably post this now.

Before (and I should have made sure they were a little bit roomy in the butt/hips area since I do get bigger there too - maybe you don't and then just get whatever fits pre-big belly.)

Round one I chose a fabric that was similar to the blue in the denim. It was an old shirt cut up. I didn't make it tall enough in front and probably should have pulled a bit tighter. From the best I could tell, all Kathleen on Grograin did was use fabric.

It didn't work for me. Could have been my doing it wrong or my body type, etc. Who knows. My pants didn't seem to stay up and the back side had too much room between my body and the fabric (you can't see that very well in this picture).

I liked how Anna from Paisley Princess used a contrasting fabric, so I tried again. So, I got a stretchier tank top at the thrift store that had a shelf bra in it which gave it more elasticity (something I thought would help). I decided to make it a little taller in front since the blue version just settled too low for my comfort. It still was too loose and I decided that I had to use elastic. All my store bough ones had it, so, I unpicked again.

The only tutorial I found that also used elastic (which I will ALWAYS do again!) was Megan Nielsen's. Round three was the most successful by far. I should have started this way.

I was able to just add extra fabric to the back of my round 2 version and sew the elastic in there.

  The addition of the elastic gave the right amount of support and made the pants fit so much better.  Very comfy and way less than normal store bought ones (especially if you buy the jeans at a thrift store. Why get them new if you're just going to hack into them?)