I’ve successfully avoided maternity clothes up until this point. There are still a couple pairs of low rise jeans that fit but not very comfortably. The more I’ve looked at maternity jeans the more frustrated I’ve become with either cost, fit or style of jeans. I wanted some skinny/tapered maternity jeans but I didn’t want to pay $200 for them either. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and convert some myself. My sister in law Erin actually gave me the idea a couple months ago.
I bought a pair of cheap jeans at target for $20 and some stretchy fabric for $7 in the scrap pile at a fabric store. I found some pretty good directions on the internet and went to work.
There are more specific instruction here, but this is the basics:

First I figured out where I could comfortably have the zipper up to and then cut out the zipper and hand stitched the fly up until that point. Then I cut and sewed a curved ‘belly’ from the fly up around to the back and cut out the top belt loops.
Next I stretched the black fabric around my belly tight, cut it and sewed it into a band and attached it to the jeans right sides together. I had to stretch it in the back to make it fit the jeans which had a wider opening. I left most of the room for stretch in the front for the belly to fit.
Then I sewed the two together carefully along the edge! That’s it!

They actually turned out pretty decent. I think I’ll make another pair with some skinny black pants I have that I don’t wear much.