Apple raisin bran. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Murch.


For Ladies With Muffins

You’ve found high-rise pants, oh good. They’re stretch, too, also good, except stretch means exactly that—stretch. The pants give and give until they sag mournfully. You have to keep hitching. So here is the fix. You’ll need two safety pins and an old soft belt with the buckle cut off.

1. Where the two front belt loops of the pants are placed, but on the inner side of the waistband, rip a few of the stitches holding the waistband to the pants. Or if you prefer, cut two small vertical slits in the waistband, just enough to allow for the width of the old soft belt.

2. Attach a safety pin to one end of the belt and push it through one of the openings.

3. With agile fingers, move the safety-pin bump through the tunnel of fabric until you come to the other opening, bunching the fabric enough to slightly decrease the waistband’s girth.

4. Push the pinned end of the belt through the second opening, remove the pin, and use it to fasten the belt to the waistband smack where the glint of metal on the reverse side can’t be seen. Your telltale bit of pin is hidden behind the belt loop.

5. Loosely pin to the waistband the other end of your old soft belt. Then adjust and readjust the pinned length of belt inside the tunnel, stepping in and out of your pants repeatedly, until the waistband fits comfortably above your muffin.

6. Fasten the end of old soft belt as you did the other end, where the safety pin won’t show. Chop off the extra amount of belt, if there is any.

7. Now your pants will stay hiked. No elastic—what you could’ve inched inside, instead—rolling and twisting and going droopy. No rusting, either, when you put them through the wash. Safety pins don’t rust.

Important note: do not try this fix with your low risers unless you want your batter swelling worse and overflowing the muffin pan.

 

 




 

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