Two wrongs don't make a properly fitting pair of pants

Next time you mess something up, repeat this to yourself: "You learn more from making mistakes than you do from getting something right the first time."

I just made that up and I'm thinking of cross-stitching it on a pillow. It's catchier than my other slogan ("Cheap toilet paper hurts my butt" — which I am going to have printed on a notepad to be used only for grocery lists as a reminder to my husband. The only time he obeyed this dictum was during my pregnancy — a great time for women because we get to rule the roost on all matters that relate to the probability of us getting hemorrhoids. On that subject, I once convinced my husband that he had hemorrhoids. He told me his butt was itchy, so I said: "Uh oh, you probably have hemorrhoids." And then, this man who won't listen to me when I tell him you shouldn't wash the entire pint of blueberries because the water makes them rot faster, he stays up half the night Googling "hemorrhoids" and is totally traumatized. He didn't have hemorrhoids, of course. It was sort of cruel of me, but I think it made him a better person).

So imagine the amount of knowledge gleaned from making two mistakes. That's what I did this weekend. In fixing my first pair of jeans (a project for my patternmaking class), i created another problem. But after making THAT mistake, I think I learned a valuable lesson in pant patternmaking.

Initially, the butt on my jeans looked pretty fantastic, but the crotch was baggy. And I don't really need room for a codpiece, so fix them I must.

See before:

The picture above doesn't really illustrate just how baggy the crotch was. When I sat it looked like I had an enormous dingaling. And I don't! So that's weird.

She suggested shortening the rise on both front and back pieces — the dark pencil line being the revision from the original

In addition, she suggested dropping the front waist by about 3/8'

I thought about it for a bit and decided not to subtract anything from the back rise, because the butt of my jeans fit so well and I didn't want to mess with that. I did drop the waist by 1/2" and took about 1/2" from the front rise. I also took in the side seam about any inch all the way down for a slimmer fit, and took in the inseam about 1/4".  Here's what happened:

After making those alterations, I got a good fit in the front and through the legs, but now the back rise is too short, which means my buttcrack shows if I make any sudden moves. And I make lots of sudden moves, so that's not a good thing for me. Damn.

I think what happened is the point where the front and back back meet in the crotch shifted forwards after I removed the excess from the front, which pulls the back down. What I believe I should have done is add the same amount to the back rise that I subtracted from the front rise. That way the balance would remain the same?  I will test this theory in my next pair of jeans.

Here they are again:

It's a preference, but I kinda like the pockets-falling-off-your-butt look