Plumber's Crack

Recently I've been noticing that my shorts have been, shall we say, not gripping my hips as tenaciously as they should, particularly if I put anything weighty in my pockets. I figured this was due to me losing weight over the past two years, but then I noticed that it was really only one pair of shorts that was giving me trouble, and two other identical pair were still holding on reasonably well.

I mean I still lost weight, there's multiple factors at work here.

Anyway, the waistband is made of 1-1/2 inch elastic, and it had lost a lot of its stretch. It was secured in place by hemming it to the edge of the shorts with an overlock stitch, before being folded over and secured with four rows of chain stitching.

Both of these stitches can be approximated with a standard sewing machine, but to really do the job right you kind of need an overlock/coverstitch machine.

Well gosh, would you look at that. Better make sure it works.

Hmm, so far so good.

Yes, that will do nicely.

Now it's time to disassemble the waistband of the shorts.

I guess there's a reason they sell this stuff in 3000 yard spools.

Goodbye, flimsy, stretched-out waistband.

Hello partially disassembled shorts.

So with that done, it's a simple matter of cutting out a fresh piece of elastic.

Oddly the new elastic is a bit longer than the old, but grips my waist quite a bit better. It's amazing what miracles actual elasticity will enable.

Of course, I'm not a big fan of having pins in my shorts, so let's try tacking that together with thread instead.

A regular sewing machine will do this just fine, then it's off to the overlocker to hem the elastic in place.

That's about as hemmed in place as things get.

A quick reconfiguration later and the chain stitching is done.

You'll notice that the backside of these stitches looks different from the original. The reason for that is fairly simple: my overlocker only has a single chainstitch looper, so if I want to do two rows of chain stitches at once, the looper thread has to go through both lines. And I do want to do two rows at once, because to hell with going around this waistband 4 times trying to keep things exactly lined up; it was hard enough just getting these two lines in the right spot to begin with.

Anyway, the looper threads are on the inside and give the waistband a little extra grip against my hips, and even if they were showing, who the fuck cares? It looks just fine.

So with that out of the way, the drawstring goes back in. Not that I ever use it, but it makes more sense than throwing it in the trash.

Pro tip: even out the ends of the drawstring then sew a line of stitches through it at the back of the waistband to keep it from pulling out.

Looks like a pair of shorts to me. I'll call this project a success.