How can I make the waist of my jeans less tight?
- Grab a pair of too-tight jeans and submerge them in lukewarm water. ...
- After the jeans are completely wet, put them on. ...
- After you've put in a few minutes of movement, take off the jeans and hang them up to air dry. ...
- After your jeans have fully dried, put them on and enjoy the extra wiggle room.
Fully wet your jeans in lukewarm water either in bathtub or a basin. Put them on (while wet, I know!), and do some movements that'll stretch them out like lunges, squats, bending over, walking, sitting, etc. You can also do the movements without wetting the jeans, but the water helps loosen and soften the threads.
Button up your pants and lay them on the ironing board until the waist can stretch as far as possible. Start steaming the waistband with one hand while pulling on it with the other hand. Continue ironing it until the waistband is dry.
Wet Your Jeans, Then Stretch Them
Once they're wet all over, strategically pull on the fabric in those areas you're hoping to stretch. Afterward, and for good measure, put on the damp jeans and wear them until they dry.
"The idea that you should wear your jeans in a bathtub is a terrible idea. It's not only uncomfortable, but it stretches out the jeans in unnatural ways. It creates knee-bagging and pulls at the hips, giving you hip-flare."
Ideally, your waistband should fit tightly enough that you don't need a belt, but not so tight that it feels constricting. For raw denim this means you can fit maybe two fingers into the waistband, but for stretchier styles that number goes up a bit to maybe four.
Heat the jeans using a hair dryer on a medium setting.
As you heat the denim, move your hair dryer continuously so that you heat each area evenly. After you heat the front of your pants, turn them over and heat the backside. You don't have to heat both sides of your pants, but it will help you stretch them out more.
- Use a seam ripper to take out 3 inches of the casing seam.
- Pull out the elastic and pin a 1-inch loop in it to tighten it.
- Try on the garment to check the fit and change the size of the loop until you are pleased with the fit.
- Cut the elastic and overlap it, keeping the pin in the same place.
- Wash your jeans by themselves in the washing machine with warm water and detergent. ...
- Add liquid starch instead of fabric softener in the rinse cycle. ...
- Hang your jeans on a clothesline to dry.
- Fill a spray bottle with more liquid starch. ...
- Iron your jeans with a hot iron on a non-steam setting.
Use warm water to fill a spray bottle and spray the waistband until it's thoroughly damp. Start moving. Squat down, do lunges, pull each leg up to your chest, or do any other movements that will help pull and stretch the dampened waistline of the pants. Do this until the waist has reached the desired level of stretch.
Can pants waist be made bigger?
Waist Too Small or Too Big
If you feel like you are suffocating inside your pants (they are super tight around the middle) or that the waist is too big and the pants are falling off of you, a tailor can take the waist in or out pronto and give your trousers a more comfortable fit.
Sit in a warm bath while wearing the jeans.
Put on the jeans that are too snug, fill a bath with warm water, and sit in it. The warm (not hot!) water will help loosen and stretch the threading a bit. You obviously need to do this one in advance, and allow the jeans to hang dry when you're done.

Pull the fabric in the direction you want the jeans to stretch. Soak in the bathtub (while wearing them). Use warm water (be careful it's not too hot), and soak for 15 minutes.
The heavy weight of the water in your clothes will stretch them even further. This is why you need to have the clothes dripping wet when you take them from the washer.
First, to get technical, that tightening phenomenon is called "consolidation shrinkage." Think of denim fibers as a long chain. When fabric is agitated during the wash and heat cycles, it causes fibers to break their bonds so the cloth gets smaller.
Jeans should be comfortably tight at first. If the jeans your trying on are really uncomfortably tight then they will probably only stretch a few inches. The best way to see if the jeans are going to be good for you is to do the sitting test. Sit down as you would in a car, and see how it feels.
All jeans get loose after a few wearings. It's the cotton denim fabric that begins to relax in those areas where it's stretched or put under the most tension. Just wearing the jeans … walking, moving about …will relax the fabric all over and they will get looser …and feel softer.
All jeans will stretch to varying degrees over time, explains Dean Brough, academic program director of QUT's school of design. "Jeans by nature actually do stretch. The fabric is meant to morph and form to the body which is why we love them," he says.
Using Hot Steam to Stretch Jeans
Heat makes denim more elastic and easier to stretch.
Using either baby shampoo or a gentle hair conditioner, mix in roughly 1 Tbsp for every 1 quart of water. Stir in, until the water takes on a slick, soapy consistency. Conditioner and baby shampoo can relax the fibers of your shrunken clothes. When the fibers are relaxed, they become easier to stretch and reshape.
Can you stretch jeans by wearing them?
Depending on how much you need to stretch the jeans, simply wearing them until they dry might stretch them out enough to fit your body, but if not, you need to follow the next few steps, making sure your jeans are still wet when you do.
It's possible to have the waist taken in by a tailor, but this is more of a delicate procedure. Because jeans aren't built with easily-altered seats and waists, there's more room for error and even less room to let out. A good tailor will take in the waist at the back, directly in the center.
If you need to enlarge the jeans only at the waist, you should go just a couple of inches below the waistband. If the jeans are tight at the hip area as well, you might want to join two pieces of elastic on top of each other to get a wider tape and go lower on the side seam.
After showering, Schoknecht suggested wearing the wet jeans for 30 minutes to stretch them out. If the pair of jeans are too tight around the waist, you can wrap a towel around the waistband and tuck it into the jeans for some extra room.
Jeans always shrink the first time they are washed but won't shrink significantly after the first wash. While they shrink a little after washing, they will then stretch out again as you wear them.