Sunday, January 6, 2013

Pants

It seems fitting (pun intended) that my first post of the year is about pants.  Last year on PR, we had a year long sew-along for fitting and making pants.   I wanted to be able to easily make my own pants that fit better than RTW.   I had challenged myself to make an average of 1 pair of pants per month.  I didn't meet that challenge, but I have learned a lot and made progress.   After making a lot of muslins, looking at my backside more than I ever wanted to, and with the help of the other ladies on the sew-along, I have figured out why most RTW pants and patterns don't work for me.  Apparently I have a high round backside with a tilted waist, and this is not the typical, average shape. And I have a very long back crotch and very short front crotch.  So now I'm working on making adjustments to come up with a TNT pants pattern.

I started out with this Vogue pattern by Sandra Betzina (it's OOP now). 

This pattern came with a Craftsy class on pants fitting taught by Sandra Betzina.   The shape and fit of the waist, hips and crotch of this pattern are pretty good for me.  Much better than any other pattern I've tried, and I've tried a lot.  What I don't like: the legs are very loose, there's a seam in the center of the legs and no front zipper.   I also had wrinkles in the backside.  And when I tried to fix one wrinkle, I would get 2 more somewhere else.  After many test pairs and much slicing & dicing, I have finally come up with a pair of pants I will actually wear.  I decided to go with a wide-leg style and loose fit.  It's hard to tell in the pictures, but I used a dark purple (eggplant?) corduroy.





Here's a picture showing the pocket and the lining for the fly & waistband.  Just for fun, I used a pink zipper :)

9 comments:

  1. Your pants are awesome! Great fit and they look beautiful and comfy!

    Immi Meyer

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  2. Your pants look great. Looks like you have achieved a great fit. Love the colour too. Well done.

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  3. Now that you have such a great fit in pants, you can whip up a new pair whenever - I am jealous!!!

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  4. Nice pants and they fit nicely. I just drafted a pair using SureFitDesigns. I've heard recently that ConnieCrawford's pant drafts for Butterick are very good. Apparently, she drafts the crotch area with a shorter front crotch. And, you are not alone with that tilted waist. I have it too.

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  6. Thanks for the comments & compliments. I appreciate them. Judith, I'm not at the point where I can just whip up a new pair, but I'm getting better :)

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  7. I really love the corduroy pants-they look great on. I have been following the pants sew along on PR hoping to learn how to get them to fit when the tilted waist and pulling down in the back syndrome makes one not want to fool with sewing them any more. I am very impressed with the corduroy pants.

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  8. I LOVE those pants. You have achieved a fabulous fit, and the fabric is gorgeous. I LOVE wearing pants, more than any other kind of garment, but find getting the fit right to be very frustrating. I've had some recent success with Sure Fit Designs (like a previous commenter mentioned) but I'm not out of the woods yet. I need to play around with the basic pattern to develop some more styles, but it feels like I'm on the right track for a change.

    I'm also going to try a pair of Connie Crawford pants this year - just as an experiment.

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    1. Thanks Kelley, And you did a great job on your pants! I'm like you, I wear pants most of the time & getting them to fit is hard. This Sandra Betzina pattern has the best fit for me in the crotch curve, but I still have more work to do.

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