Lessons I've Learned Regarding Pants Sewing

This is only my last two versions of my skinny pants draft...not pictured are the four that have since been recycled. 

I was going to title this "Final Thoughts on Pants Sewing" but that sounds like I'm done with pants altogether and have Figured It Out, which I most definitely have not! But I thought I'd share with you some of the things I've learned both in class and in the actual process of sewing.

In no particular order (and some of these are repeats of what I've said in various posts here and there):

• Drafting from measurements is great and all, and it will probably give you a better fit than if you were to sew up your size from a commercial pattern (which is based on a block that may or may not be similarly-shaped), but it is not a miracle. Drafting still makes some assumptions about your body, about how those same thirty inches are distributed, about how your knees do or don't stick out, about your posture, about the angle at which your legs meet your pelvis, or even the amount of ease you prefer. My first draft was made to my measurements, but the drafting guidelines couldn't possibly have known about my swayback, my hyperextended calves, or that my lower legs come out of my knees at a funny angle. I still had to make corrections to my muslin, then transfer those to my draft, only to make another set of changes because the first set of changes affected how other things hung. Fitting is a trial and error process, and unless you are shaped exactly the way the drafting book thinks, you're still going to need to make changes. It's okay, you didn't do anything wrong, and your body is definitely not wrong. 

• It's so much easier to see where changes need to be made when you have the balance lines drawn on your muslin. Having horizontal lines at the high hip lets you see when things aren't parallel to the ground, and having vertical lines up the middle helps you adjust things like grainline.

• When making changes, it's way easier to just wear the muslin and have somebody else do the slashing, spreading, pinning, and seam ripping. Although I more or less managed with previous pairs of pants, it's dang hard trying to turn just your top half around to evaluate wrinkles without moving your bottom half. If you can pair up with a sewing buddy to have a fitting day, it makes life so much easier!

• When making changes to your muslin, start from the top and work your way down, since the way the crotch fits will affect how the legs hang. If you make a knock-knee adjustment before correcting the crotch depth, you may find the first alteration unnecessary or just plain wrong. 

• Sometimes the easiest way to tell what adjustments you need is to look at how your RTW pants fit (or don't fit, as the case may be). If the inner thigh area always wears out first/pills the most, that might mean a full inner thigh alteration (see #3 here for how to do that). If you're always getting a wedgie, you might need to slash and spread to lengthen the back rise (see #9). If, like me, you're always getting stuck in dressing rooms when trying on skinny jeans (true story), you might have very full calves...

• Check your inseams: the front inseam should be about 1/2" longer than the back inseam. By sewing from the bottom up, and keeping the front and back at a 1:1 ratio up until the knee, and then stretching the back inseam to match the front above the knee, you make it so that the fabric will hug the back of your leg more in the curve under your butt. Totally makes sense, but I never would've thought of that on my own!

• I already said this in the previous post, but it bears repeating -- make a muslin in a comparable fabric! "If you're going to make a paper garment, then go ahead and fit it in paper. But if you're planning to make a fabric garment, fit it in fabric!" This is especially true for pants whose final fashion fabric is going to be significantly different from cotton muslin in stretch, hand and drape. 

• Of course, it can be hard to find comparable muslin fabric when your final pants are going to be made from stretch denim, so when sewing pants with stretch, baste together the pieces to check for fit before you insert the fly front or do pockets. My flocked brocade had a pretty significant spandex content (when it comes to stretch, even 2% is significant!), so I ended up taking in the side seam by about 1.5" on both front and back, and 1" on the inseam. 

The gray pencil lines are my skinny pants draft, which fit fine in cotton muslin. The light blue color pencil is what I brought it in to after the initial fitting. You can see I also lowered the waist significantly. And look at how flat that curve is, especially compared to these!

• A lot of commercial pants patterns, and even drafting book guidelines, have a much deeper front crotch curve than is normally found in RTW pants. If things are baggy in the front crotch, flatten out the J by taking out what is essentially a vertical fisheye dart in the paper pattern (see #8 here). That will make the pants fit more like what we're used to.  For example, in my Edisto, Clover,  and Audrey pants, which are all made from commercial patterns, I had some level of bagging/pouchiness in the front crotch area, but in my work gauchos, which were rubbed off of a pair of RTW pants, I didn't have that issue. 

• Before we made our final pants, our prof had us make a fly front sample set; she divided the process into four steps and we made a little sample for each step. I found it extremely helpful for reference since I can never remember how to do a fly front. Of course, it would've been more helpful if I'd done the samples in the correct direction! The principle is still sound, though...it's way easier to refer to physical samples that you can touch and manipulate than a diagram (or worse, just a list of steps!) in a book. 

These are my fly-front samples. We had to sew up step one four times, step two three times, step three two times, etc. In case you're wondering: 1) Sew up from the bottom of the curve, backstitching at the base of the fly and then basting it shut. Line up the edge of the zipper tape with the CF seam, sew to fly flap only. 2) Flip the zipper over and topstitch the fly piece to the tape. 3) Flip the zipper facedown again and sew it to the other fly flap (don't catch the other pants front...ask me how I know). 4) Flip the whole thing over and topstitch the little J; add a fly guard and bar tacks if you wish. It was tedious to do, but I'm glad in hindsight. 

Completed sample from the front!

• Our prof also recommended that instead of trying to draft a contour waistband, to just cut a straight rectangle, baste it to the finished pant, and then pin darts in several places to get the right curve. Then you can just transfer the darts to a paper pattern and cut them out to make a curve. 

Now I know why all commercial waistbands don't fit me well...they're not nearly curvy enough! I wouldn't have ever believed this if I hadn't pinned out those darts myself to end up with this. 

• Lastly, the whole point of a waistband is that it should act like a belt to hold the pants up. To that end, it should usually be about 1/2" smaller than the top of the pants, and the top of the pants should be eased into the waistband. I used to always have a problem with waistbands that were too big, and now I know why!

Finally (okay, I know I said I wouldn't say final, and I just said "lastly," so obviously I am having issues with ending and diction), don't feel bad if it takes a long time to actually make a finished pair of pants! I was sewing like a madwoman very very intense person to get my pants done in nine hours, and our prof even said that she doesn't think a good pair of jeans can be finished in under eight hours, and she's been sewing for 35 years!

Ever since I started sewing pants, I've spent a lot of time staring at people's butts and crotches (surreptitiously, of course) trying to figure out what kind of adjustments they need, if any. Learning to read drag lines and wrinkles can be tricky (and make you seem like a perv?), but it's worth it for a great-fitting pair of pants.

My smirking "I'm secretly staring at the drag lines at your crotch" face. And hey, thank you all so, so much for all your really sweet comments on my last post about these pants! I wore them all day and they were so comfy (and they didn't sag and bag, at least not that I noticed) and I felt so proud knowing that I made them.  

So, what do you think? Have I inspired you to tackle pants? Any enlightening lessons of your own you'd care to share with us?