Hemming and narrowing jeans

What I did:
Purpose:

Before

A few years ago, I did a slapdash job of narrowing the legs of pair of my jeans from wide flare to narrow bootcut. I hadn't bothered hemming them. Unless I wore quite high heels (which I almost never do), the hems would drag on the ground in the back, and looked bunchy in the front.

Scroll through for thumbnail pictures, or click on any image for slideshow view.

Before: front

Before: back

After

It's possible to shorten jeans while keeping the original hem, but I decided not to keep the original hem of these jeans because the fabric was worn and fraying in the back. Instead, I re-hemmed the jeans: I took scissors to the lower legs of the jeans, cut so that the legs were slightly longer than I eventually wanted them to be, folded the fabric under, ironed, and sewed. It was pretty quick.

I also took in the legs a bit more — from narrow bootcut to something between bootcut and skinny.

After: front

After: back

After: side

After: side view, zoomed out