Altering jeans?

Are we talking about lowering the rise, or making the waistband smaller? I've had about an inch taken off the waistband successfully. You would never know the work had been done. Three inches seems like a lot, though, and might fuck with the geometry of jeans elsewhere.

Three inches'll bring the back pockets really close together. Unless they could do 1.5" on either side.

i though about doing this, but ended up just flipping the jeans. the 36 x 34 rrl $185 slimfit bootcut is basically perfect everywhere (including the seat), except at the waist. I thought about trying to have the waist taken in but decided it just wasn't worth the hassle.

my thinking was to take off the back belt loop, slice the waistband in the back, undo the stitches stitching down the middle cross seam on jeans (i don't know the term for this, but four seams come into a cross right above the pockets, at the location of where your tailbone is located), and then take 2 to 3 inches out and sew back up.

the result theoretically would have kept the pockets in the same place, with the waist much slimmer.

as it is, i'm going to try to snag a 34 x 34 and hope that it's not too thin in the seat.....

Get rid of them and buy another pair that fits around the waist. Altering the waist of any pair of pants by that many inches will pull the back pockets too close together... Think about it.

In my case, the alterations wouldn't have pulled the back pockets to close together, since the starting point for where the material starts getting taken in would have been higher than the pocket location...

Hey, if you think you could do it without altering the shape of the jeans, then go for it. Just make sure you'll be ok if the work isn't exactly the way you imagined b/c 3" is a lot of material to cut out without affecting the original shape. Good luck.

You might be able to remove the waistband and hide a dart in each of the side seams (and replace a shortened waistband) to bring in the waist a bit without throwing off the proportions too much. But I think it'd be *much* smarter to take the advice given by others and sell/trade the jeans for ones that fit right already. Jeans proportions are something everyone is familiar with so any change will be apparent, even if the tailor is quite good.