The Truth: Bigger is not Better- Part 1

Once again Fashion is reminding me with a sledgehammer of distasteful styles that I am smaller then petite.  Not only am I short but my limbs are all too small as well.

Shopping for Fashionable diggs when you are 4'10" and 110 lbs puts me in basically the kids/tweens sections if I were to go to a Macy's.  Which I only frequent when I need some Makeup on the go and sometimes browse the shoes.  Living in probably the most midwest city that is large but not Chicago or Philly I am left to the internets, Urban Outfitters, Express, Antrhopologie, Forever 21 our tiny H&M and Nordstrom with the occasion Sak's visit if I want to drive out to that particular mall.   None of these stores help with the situation for those of us shorter squat but lovely individuals.  For some reason all theses stores seem to think the wider you are then automatically the taller you become.  OH what a cruel Joke.  Majority of the midwest population are not super models ~SURPRISE~  We are in fact normal ladies with short comings and big personalities.    Due to these literal short comings we have to get creative.  A lot of women pay a lot of money for getting their clothes altered.  I have women taking  my pattern drafting classes at CCAD just to learn how to alter their own clothing and hem their pants without it looking wonky.  Lucky for me I sew and pattern draft so I can usually avoid buying a pair of pants, skirt, blouse what have you that can't be altered.  That is still extremely limiting.

If you want quality clothes they are much harder and painstaking to pick apart for alterations because they were made well to begin with.  Clothes made well are made to last and not to be torn apart.  Cheaper clothes can easily be torn apart at all the seams which makes it easy to alter but then usually the fabric quality is so poor it may not last the alterations process.  It's a battle that us short girls just don't win.

My personal creative way to go around all this is with skirts.  I wear skirts and dresses as much as I can because then I never have to worry about pants at all and their lengths.  I hardly wear jeans even.  Oh and the blessing of leggings coming back into style was superb!  Allowing me to wear all my dresses and skirts through the dead cold of winter and still being warm and cozy and sexy.  Alas my skirt days may need to come to an end at least at my new job.  Working at a library that has a very casual dress code and bending, squatting and lifting books is not so attractive in a dress or skirt.  This has made me realize that I need to get back to wear jeans and pants.

Pants are a problem, even the short lengths are too long for me by at least 2-3 inches.  Jeans are also annoying because they actually have shape these days.  They get wider in the knee and skinnier around the "ankle".  So the tapering on these skinny jeans and cigarette jeans just looks funky on me.  I can cut them off and hem them to the right length but then they are too big around my ankle and my shin has extra bagginess as well.  The best fashion solution to all this is getting wide leg pants.  They make you look taller and are easier to hem because you don't have to worry about the shaping like in a skinnier cut.

The Bad and Good by tornangel012 featuring Fremont pants

Short Comings

If you didn't know it I am extremely short.  It makes clothes look totally different on me then it does on other people.  What would be a mini skirt on some is knee length of me.  To this effect the trend of jean ripped in the knees is on my shins.   No, seriously I am nearly legal midget height I am only 4'10" I wear a size 5-5.5 shoe and sometimes I shop the children's sections of clothing.

Back to the story these ripped jeans.  I fell in love with having a pair of trendy black skinny jeans when I went back to help out some shifts at Express about two weeks ago.

First off I would never of bought these without my discount because to start I have to cut off nearly 4 inches to first fit my height.   Then for the problem of the "knee" that they think is just going to be universal.  Maybe in NYC or LA you would have better luck but a company based in the Midwest Corporately should know better.  Majority of the clients do not run under if your a bigger size you will be taller!  Or that everyone is a 5'8" bombshell of long lean legs.

Here are the Jeans in Question after I shortened them

Here are the tools you would need to continue doing the shredding yourself in the more controlled and safe manner.   A Sharp Razor or Exacto Knife and small square of Cardboard.

After Marking where I want to rip it I stuck the cardboard underneath inside the pants.  Personally I did want to shred the jeans on both the front and back so this was a good control.  Also having the Cardboard in there gave me a good surface to cut against.  If my blade went past the cardboard it didn't sink into the fabric and cut any further.

The before and after shredding.  When you shred this you need to pay attention and making slicing strokes to follow the already apparent pattern.  In this case the weave was missing horizontally leaving just the vertical strings so I needed to slice vertical as well to preserve as much of the vertical strands as possible.  Do not willy nilly slice it or move diagonally because that will cut those vertical threads that you want to preserve.  if you want to be really precise about it use a ruler against your blade to keep it all perfectly straight.  I know it looks a little ragged in the After photo but do NOT feel you need to get each individual strand out.  Every time you wash these jeans more and more of the middle fuzz will come out leaving you with just the rip you want.  After the first wash of these jeans I used a lint roller to go across the new rips to gently pick out the extra fuzz still clinging.

My End Results after one wash