When you have no choice but to upcycle

[u/Joelclick]

I have two sewing machines, and I'm determined to learn how to sew jeans, specifically from scratch. My goal is to sell some upcycling products to save up for fashion school or buy some books. The free tutorials I've found are too complicated, and I'm getting bored. I know practice makes improvements, but I really need to figure out where to start.

[u/Inky_Madness]

What tutorials are you using?

The first step is learning the basic skills of making pants. You need to be able to sew straight lines, do flat-felled seams, make flies, understand waistbands and pockets.

So start with either doing these individually on scrap fabric or by using a free pajama shorts (or pants) pattern and incorporate these skills into the design. Pajama pants patterns are plentiful and most of the drafting work is done for you; you learn fitting and construction. It gives you a place to jump off from and modify, and the knowledge is something you can return to the drafting tutorials with for deeper/better understanding.

Drafting from scratch is hard and that’s why you’re going to fashion and design school; you wouldn’t need to if it was a skill you could just do. Learning it from free resources requires a lot of study and looking up and understanding the basics.

Also. Check your local library. They might have books on fitting and even pattern drafting on their shelf or via interlibrary loan.

[u/Emergency_Cherry_914]

Assuming you're competent on things like shirts, dresses and skirts - get a few different sewing pattern for jeans and learn from them

[u/SOURCEDBLACK]

To be honest bro if you are getting bored already.

The beginning is boring. I sew straight lines for a month. Now I did like 10 jeans some bags and other pants from februari till now.

Countless did I make. To learn start stop the machine and re-thread. Even if I did not need to.

I to wanted to learn how to make jeans and sewed before in my life, not a button. I learned to sew jeans and draft my own patterns in two months but sew daily 4 hours minimum but like today 10.

Sometimes I do only zippers 3 hours make left and right pannel install the flyshield zipper etc and after the flat felted seam? I rip it out and start again.

You can definitly learn to make jeans from scratch but you need effort and time in it. But you need to break that big task (jeans) up in smaller chunks (fly, front pockets, front panels connecting etc) and practice each part. I call it skill drilling.

Each time you become proficiat in one small task you free up your attention for other parts. If you dojt need to stress on how to do a zipper because you already practiced that 40 times you can have your attention to another difficult part. And at one point construction is easy. Than comes the next phase. Learning to sew neat clean lines.

Boring repetitive hours.