I pulled out my old pants pattern, cut it out of the cord fabric (with an extra 1" on each side seam to allow for any growth in girth), basted it together and tried it on.....it felt terrible, the back rise felt way too small, the legs don't seem to sit right, the whole thing seems to creep down my back if I sit down or walk upstairs. Now I'm not sure what's going on here - I used this pattern for my brown cords and I still love the way these feel on so I'm not sure what the problem is?
So I decided to go back to the drawing board.
I pulled out my pattern pieces and re-traced it onto a new piece of paper. I then went through my pattern stash and pulled out every pant pattern I could find and then - lining them up at the natural waist marks - I traced each pattern piece over my pattern to see how they differed.
The main difference I found was the angle of the back crotch seam. Mine was angled out a lot further than all of the other patterns.
Whilst I was doing all this investigation I found in my possession a copy of McCalls 9517.
I never realised this before, but view A of this pattern has a seam down the back of the leg. Now this is one place that I really struggle to fit with pants so I decided that I would make up this pair of pants and see if I could use the seam to get my pants to fit better. Luckily the copy of this pattern that I have is for a 40" hip. I have a 42" hip, but based on a comparison of this pattern and my pants pattern I decided that it would be close enough (I've noticed that these old patterns always have a lot of ease in them) and traced out the pattern.
The only changes that I made were:
- cut 4" off the length of the legs,
- since I was planning on putting a waistband on I cut 2" off the top of the pattern pieces
- I split the front pattern piece down the middle to create a seam down the front to match the seam down the back.
Now the problem was that I had already cut out my fabric in my original pants pattern. I had enough left to cut out new back pieces, but not the front pieces. So I took my previously cut pattern pieces, pulled out all the stitching and was able to just get the 4 front pieces out of the 4 original pieces of my pants.
I basted the pants together and was pretty impressed with the fit. I still needed to do a few tweaks though:
- The first thing I noticed was that the rise was still way too high - with the 2"cut off the top it fitted as it was supposed to by the pattern picture so I decided to just go with it and make a faced finish rather than a waistband.
- The pants fitted fairly nicely around the hips but were a bit too big across the front, so I took in each front seam about 3/8" the entire way down.
- The pants were still a little baggy around the thighs so I shaped both the side seams and the back seams so that they fit snuggly through the thigh and then flared out. The flare is probably a bit more than I would normally have chosen but I decided to go with it anyway.
- I scooped out the crotch curve at the bottom so that it is almost a right angle now.
- 4" was obviously a bit too much to take off the bottom of the leg, these barely skim the ground un-hemmed so I added about 2" back onto the length of the pants.
I transferred all the changes (except the length) to my new pattern pieces before going ahead and sewing the pants up.
I pretty much went my own way from here rather than following the pattern for finishing. I added a zip fly to the front (which took me ages to figure out for some reason - I must have spent close to 3 or 4 hours trying to get that fly in).
Unfortunately after wearing the pants for about 2 days the stupid zipper broke - I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet so for the time being I've just sewed the fly closed - I can still get them on and off with a little wriggling. One day I'll get around to fixing them properly, but until then....
I added back patch pockets with just a simple top stitched design.
And front slash pockets that extend into the fly. I finished the top of the pants with an interfaced facing piece that is top stitched down around the back but not the front. (It would have interfered with the pockets otherwise).
To deal with the length issue I cut two strips out of my leftover fabric and created a band around the bottom of each leg.
They're still a smidge short, but that was all the fabric I had.
Overall I love the way these turned out, As I said before they're probably a bit too flared, but hey, everyone needs a bit of flare in their life!
Looking at these pictures I think the front of the leg is a bit too tight - hence the creases - and the corduroy has a real nap which shows up creases really badly, but on the positive side I love the way the back of these pants look.
Once I knew that this pattern worked I got started on my second pair of pants. I got a job interview and realised that I have no pants that are nice enough to wear so wanted to make a good pair of pants. I trawled through my stash but I had no material with the yardage I needed so I took a trip up to my favourite discount fabric store and picked out a beautiful wool material. Its black with just a hint of a chevron pattern and very faint blue stripes. I knew this material would need lining so I picked up a beautiful piece of rayon as well that is patterned in blues and butterflies.
And then again as a lining in the rayon. I joined the two pairs of pants together around the waistband and then added a piece of elastic onto the seam allowance as the pants were quite heavy fully lined and I didn't want them falling down.
Having worn both pairs of pants for about a month now there are a couple of extra modifications that I think need to be made:
- I think I still need to do some tweaking with the front crotch curve as the front doesn't quite sit as I would like.
- I would like an extra just 1/2"-1" rise right at the back seam - it seems to dip just a smidge.
- I need about 1" less rise at the front - the rise at the moment is good whilst standing, but when I sit they tend to roll down about 1" so I think eliminating this inch would be a good thing.
Just to round everything out - you may have noticed that the shirt I'm wearing is the same as my lining material for the black pants - I used my leftovers to create this simple little top. I used my basic pattern for a top with a seam right under the bust - this allows me to put in two simple bust darts and creates a nice form fitting top. Unfortunately I forgot that that pattern was drafted for knit fabrics so it ended up way too small. I managed to salvage it by adding in an 1.25" wide piece under each arm. Its not perfect but it works. The front and back V necks are finished with a simple facing and the arm holes are just turned and stitched. I've found myself reaching for this top many times in the last couple of weeks since I made it.
The way you dive into these projects completely amazes me every time. The fit on your garments is really good. Those front and back seams were a good idea. Great projects, and good luck with your job interview!
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