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

Jeans, Take 2

The good news is the jeans I drafted and sewed this week look amazing on my butt. That's a feat for sure. The bad news, however, is I'm only going to get a B+ again because the crotch doesn't fit right and I don't have the time today to figure out why and fix it.  I think I could do it, but it would require ripping off the waistband in the center front, then removing the fly, reshaping the front and then sewing all that junk back on, which ain't gonna happen. Well, it will eventually. Because I like these jeans and want to wear them — just not with the crotch as it is. I would post pics of me wearing them but Lucy's arms aren't strong enough to hoist our SLR camera and my husband is working.

Here's the front:

Check out all that topstitching!

Pockets!

And the secret surprise inside: pockets made from scraps of the super cool printed Snoozer Loser fabric I won a little while back.

These things Are Tedious

Put a bird on it!

So today is the first day of Male Pattern Baldness' Jeans Sew-along, which is serendipitiously timed with this week's class project for jeans. Mine are due Wednesday night, however, so I may not get the full advantage of sourcing working knowledge from all the participants. As you can see from my pockets pictured at left, I'm already knee deep in denim. I went with white top-stitching, and decided to machine-embroider a trio of seagulls on each back pocket.

Our teacher doesn't believe in providing us with any instruction on how to sew the garments we draft for class. This is all well and good if you have sewn these items before (one of my classmates sews for Vera Wang — fancy!), but if you haven't, it's a stretch to work out the most logical way to assemble a complicated thing like jeans. If you were working from a pattern, you would have detailed assembly instructions. Me, I will mostly be looking at the jeans I already own to figure out in what order I should assemble.

This is where I was hoping the jeans sew-along at Male Pattern Baldness would lend a hand. 

I'm all set to start assembling today. The pattern is done. My pieces are all cut out. And after the too-big pants fiasco from my last project, I decided to take the tedious extra step of stay-stitching all curved pieces. And with hips and a butt like mine, that's pretty much ALL the pieces. There's not a straight seam to be found in my pattern. See?

Pow!

I take shortcuts whenever I can, but I learned a valuable lesson in sewing my first pair of pants. My pattern was good, but the fabric stretched as I sewed. The result was sloppy-looking, baggy pants (which I eventually managed to salvage into a cute, decently fitting pair of trousers, but not without ripping out a lot of stitches). And the whole point of drafting a pant pattern to fit yourself is to attain the perfect fit. It was disappointing. 

So this time around I stay-stitched all around each piece so they will hold their shape as I sew. Sewing books and patterns will tell you to do this along necklines and armholes, in particular, because they are very curved and can stretch out during sewing. Stay-stitching is like a stabilizer, and helps your garment remain the shape it's supposed to be. It's easy to do: just straight-stitch 1/4"-1/2" from the edge of all curved seams:

Straight-stitching the yoke

Once you make a pair of pants, it's hard to believe that any company can make money selling an item of clothing so complicated. Stay-stitching 14 pieces took me an hour. Of course, I am slow as molasses compared to someone who does this all day long for a living. But still, I will never take my yoked five-pocket, fly-front skinny jeans for granted again.

That's Why It's Called a "French Curve"

As expected, I got another B+ in patternmaking class last night, for my too-big striped trousers, which I will fix after this semester is over and I have a little more time on my hands. In my favour, however, my professor surmised that my fit problems were not due to an imperfect pattern; my fabric stretched along the bias as I was sewing, which is a sign I need to get my act together and stay-stitch everything if i want my clothes to fit properly — and get an A.

Afterward she stood there for a long time as she was checking my jeans pattern I was working on, her eyes on the hip curve. "You think it's too curved?" I asked her.

"It's very coorved," she agreed. (She's Russian).

Then she looked at my lower half and added: "But you are also very coorved."

And then she shrugged, which I think means "Glad it's you and not me, lady."

A closer look at my jeans pattern

The thing with hips (or any curves, for that matter) is that they make it just so much harder to get a good fit. It wouldn't be hard to make a pair of pants fit two sticks with a pumpkin on top. But throw in a few curves and you need to add darts, seams, pleats, tucks — any of these things can add dimension to your garment to make it fit around areas of the body that won't fit into a pillowcase.

Of course, stretch fabrics eliminate some of these issues. The design doesn't have to be as exacting when a little spandex can compensate for an extra bump here or there. But when you find a brand that fits you just right (for me, that has been Citizens of Humanity, which I cannot afford anymore), be loyal; they use the same general shape for each different pair, so you're likely to fit the brand's other pants too.

The denim I choose for these jeans doesn't have much stretch to it, and as you can see this pattern is for a classic pair of jeans with a touch of flare to the leg. If I can, I'll start cutting tonight.