Those Elusive Perfect Pants

I sewed up my capris today. Definitely not perfect, better than the original pair, though, but not by a lot.


So I went downstairs to my bookshelf and pulled out the following Threads issues:

1. January 2007--Fitting Series: The Seat of the Pants


2. January 2008--Make the Best-Fitting Pair of Pants EVER


3. December 2005--A Better Way to Fit Pants

The one I liked the best for what I was working on was the article by Joyce Murphy from Dec. 2005. That's the one about Body Space, and I truly feel that is the most relevant for my figure at this point. I had a revelation when working on my crotch curve and kind of used her method but didn't have any extra space at the side seams (working with 3/8" SA's--what a duh!) to add width to account for the width removed at the CB. So, yeah, it's a bit snug across the bum with some ugly side seam pulls.


I made my changes on the pattern, but before making a new pair of capris, I'm going to use the Jan. 2008 issue to draft my own pants pattern and see how it differs from the one in which I made changes. I think that will be fairly interesting.



While I was working on my body space today, I used my flexible curve to check my crotch curve. My curve wasn't as long as my crotch length so I had to do the best I could. And you know what? I have an awfully strange/bizarre crotch curve. Guess it would be called a tilted pelvis? Here's the pic.

So there you go (inseam point at ribbon mark). A short, shallow front with little curve, and a deep, low, long back curve. Scoop, scoop, scoop, huh. (Guess when my butt dropped it hit the floor.) According to Joyce's method, I had to remove quite a bit of the pattern in the back to get more width for my body space. Then I had to add the width removed to the side seam. Hmm...maybe Joyce should have used me for the article! So now my bizarre pattern looks like this:

Please excuse the blue smudges all over the place. My hands are covered with marker ink! Now isn't that the oddest pattern??? Look at the side curve I had to add because of the body space removed at the CB seam. Turns out my back side seam is an inch longer than the front side seam because of this addition of width at the side. Joyce doesn't discuss how to deal with this so I guess it will have to be eased in. Good thing I'm working with natural fiber fabric. I have no idea how this would look in a hard-to-ease synthetic fabric.

Here's a pic of the front and back together (don't look at my smudged table!):

Talk about a bad ass curve LOL! I did a search on "Joyce Murphy pattern alteration" (or something like that) and came across a blog post by Sigrid in October 2007. I looked at her pants fitting blog posts from that time period and found them extremely enlightening. So I'm still very hopeful for a nice, fitting pair with no bad a$$ issues.

I'll keep you posted on my progress. Can't see getting a lot done with drafting my own this weekend as I have to take the girls (GASP) back-to-school shopping. For RTW clothes--yuck. I hate mall shopping and didn't get that female shopping gene. Remember when fabric stores used to be in malls, like So-Fro Fabrics? If only there was one! I sure miss them. They could shop for RTW all afternoon while I perused the pattern books. But no. I'll just have to bring some paperwork with me to keep busy. Please...pity me. Me going to the mall is like taking a typical (most anyway) male to a sewing store.

Tomorrow is popcorn and wine cooler night! Yep, I'm one heck of an exciting girl ;) . I'll drink my cooler, enjoy my popcorn, and catch up on my blog reading which has been neglected for a few days.

Almost forgot, thank you to Kasey, Kim, and Sigrid. They gave me lots of tips on bras. Kasey gave me info on adhesive bras, Kim told me she bought a great one at Victoria's Secret (guess which store I WILL be going into this weekend!), and Sigrid encouraged me to try my hand sometime at making my own.