You can have jeans tailored just like other clothes. Most mens stores have a tailor that works with the store, although this is getting harder to find these days. Or check around and find a seamtress, most work out of their homes but advertise, or are listed in the Yellow Pages. Or ask at a bridal shop for the name or business card of the seamstress they use. I have boughten men's jeans and had them taken in at the waist. You can have them hemmed too, of course. To take them in at the waist they can either put in two darts or take in the backseam. If they take in the backseam they need to have a special sewing machine that does felled seams. This may cost more to have done. Mens jeans are sized by the waist and the inseam length, in various combinations. Measure your waist at the point where the waist of the jeans will fall, this is not neccessarily at the bellybutton. Never order jeans from a cataloge or online. They will never fit right. (Unless you are already familiar with the brand and style# and are only replacing jeans you already own.) Every brand caters to a different figure type and fit.

I hate ironing. My Mom used to iron everything, sheets, Dad's underwear, just everything. she taught me how to iron when I was about 8. Started with flat stuff, handkerchiefs,etc, finally learned how to iron blouses and shirts. I was darned good at it, but HATED every minute. Now I look at labels and refuse to buy anything that requires ironing. I do use a clothes pole outdoors to dry most of my items. But I always put jeans and towels in the (gas) dryer because I hate the way they get so hard and scratchy. I will try this tip.

"Before I was a "real" quilter, I used sheets to back my quilts. I also used hospital blankets as batting. Boy, did that make them heavy. I just tied quilts then, no stitch quilting. Some of those monsters are still floating around." Exactly, and when I make an utilitarian anything, I always try to use up something to recycle it. My very first puff quilt was made with a motley assortment of fabrics, many of them old sheets. I have had it three years now on the daybed in the living room. It gets lolled on by gardeners with boots on, the dog and cats, it gets thrown in a washer at least one a month, and still is going strong, and just beginning to show some wear. IOW, my biggest investment was time and it has outlived anything I could have purchased commercially and manhandled like that. My ex MIL was the first quilter I ever met. She produced dozens and dozens of them over the years, made of old coats, men's trousers, sheets, wool blankets and backed with feed sacks. She is dead now, but her quilts are still on family beds four decades later. I can't think of a definition of a 'real' quilter as applied to fabrics. It's a folk art form and you are free to express it however it works for yourself. You may not be free to enter such a homespun creation into a show, but I've seen some of those old jewels made of things handy in exhibitions, and antique stores. I do frequent fabric shops now for 'quilter's cottons' and use them for things I do in this forum millieu, but I still do my primitives for my own use and gobbling up fabrics and reusing them are a fun way for me to express myself in a manner I can afford, and feel good about 'being green'.

Sin, repurpose it...cut, hem and add another rod and there you have an adorable shower curtain valance. LOL. Well dang Sin, but glad you posted this as my next trip to Target I needed to pick up a new shower curtain. Wont do that now. I have a cream one now that's mostly cotton with some poly, I can't remember the poly/cotton% but I wash it in hot, its never shrunk. I've noticed shower curtains are not easy to find they either have fish on them or some kind of print that I just don't like. Go shopping Sin. Lol