Refurbished Linen Crop Pants

I have a pair of linen wide leg crop pants that I love. They are at least ten years old, but are still in style and super comfortable. They are cool if it is hot out, or warm if it is cool out, and they can be dressed up or down. The waist band is just a simple elastic casing which lately seems to slide down and hit me in the wrong place. I have a pair of yoga pants with a wider yoke style waistband that sits right, so I decided to try to re-do the waistband on the linen pants like that.

I thought of looking for a pair of pants with the right kind of waistband at a thrift shop, to reuse for my linen pants. The places to shop for clothes where we live now include Walmart and Fleet Farm, plus a few independent shops, consignment shops and thrift shops. Sometimes you can find what you need there, but actually I have not needed anything much since retiring from my job, moving to the lake, and living though the pandemic (while wearing the same pair of yoga pants with a fleece top or hoodie sweatshirt almost every single day).

We went to the Twin Cities for a memorial service recently. My husband was giving the Eulogy and realized at the last minute that he needed a new shirt and tie, so we went to Macy’s and Kohl’s. I had not been shopping at a department store for ages, so it was quite a culture shock.

I have always felt overwhelmed inside a Macy’s store. There is a sea of too many choices and they are arranged by designer instead of by type of item. I want to see all of the same kind of thing in one place for easy evaluation. I get lost in a big department store and cannot figure out which displays I have already looked at, what direction to go next, or how to get out of there. And I am sure you have all experienced shopping at Kohl’s where they practically pay you to take the merchandise with all the sales, promotions, and Kohl’s bucks. It is part of the whole larger problem of fast fashion, which will be a topic for another day.

While my husband looked at shirts in the Kohl’s store, I browsed the clearance racks. I found a pair of denim pants for $4.00 (plus 20% off of that!). They were too short and a little big in the waist, but would work to reuse the waistband for the linen pants.

Following is a photo of my linen crop pants, next to the clearance pants from Kohls.

The first steps in this project were to undo the casing on the linen pants, and remove the waistband from the Kohl’s pants. I will save the rest of the Kohl’s pants for some other future upcycle project.

I found that the fabric where the linen pants folded over the elastic was completely worn through in several places, but I ended up cutting that part off.

I took in about 1/2″ on the Kohl’s pants waistband. Next I trimmed and gathered the waist of the linen pants a little to fit the new style waistband. I used another pair of pants for a guide to get the right crotch length. The next photos show the denim pants waistband ready for attaching to the linen pants, and then the linen pants trimmed and gathered a bit.

Following is the new waistband attached to the linen pants. The color does not show very well, it is darker navy like the photo above.

Following is a photo of me modeling the refurbished linen pants with a scarf I wove when we were in Arizona over the winter. It is like having a whole new outfit.