A Guide to Resizing Your Motorcycle Pants

Motorcycle pants should always be larger than your normal size for jeans or slacks. This is because you will usually wear the pants over another pair of trousers in order to protect your regular clothes from the rain and elements. However, if you happen to purchase a pair of motorcycle pants that are much too large, or if you inherit a pair from someone else, you will need to alter them so they fit you or purchase another pair (if you can't return them).

Motorcycle pants are expensive; so, if you can alter the pants you should do so in order to save some money. Resizing the pants so that they fit properly is not as difficult as you may think. If you have some basic knowledge of sewing and can operate a sewing machine, you can re-size your motorcycle pants with little or no problem.

Getting Started

Before you begin resizing your bike pants, you will need to determine the type of changes you want to make. Generally speaking, if the pants have seams or hems that can be let out, alterations to make smaller pants larger can be achieved. However, since leather is pretty expensive, most pants makers don't include a lot of excess material in the pants.

If you want to make your pants smaller, you will probably be taking in the waist or hip area or possibly shortening the length of the legs. These types of alterations are fairly straight forward. To make these kinds of changes to the pants, you will need to try on the pants and determine where the material needs to be taken in.

You can use a piece of chalk or even bar soap to mark the pants at the locations the seams and hems need to be adjusted. Then, take some pins to secure the seams while you take a hot iron to press into place where the adjustments will be made. Although this step is not mandatory, it will help make using the machine to sew the new seams much easier.

Ripping and Sewing

Once you have determined where the hems and seams need to be taken in, you can use a utility knife or thread knife to cut or rip out the old seams. When removing the seams, you should take great care not to cut the leather material. Cut only the thread on the seams and then carefully separate the pieces of material.

If you have used the hot iron to create the hem and seam creases, folding the extra leather material under and sewing the new seams should be easy. You should use a loosely stitched seam type on the first pass, so that you can try on the pants to make sure they fit you well. Once you are comfortable with the way they fit, you can use a double stitched seam to make the adjustments permanent. When sewing the seams, use a heavy duty thread that matches the color of the original stitching as closely as possible.