Fitting the pant
My body shape is best suited for skirts and dresses. But my mind wants to wear pants. It’s a constant battle and as you can see in the image above, sometimes there are causalities involved.
I’ve spent so much time this week trying to crack that elusive code of well fitting pants and I nearly lost my mind in the process. Well I’ve finally made some progress. But let’s start off with were I left you last time:
After my pledge for help in my last pant post I got loads of great suggestions. I actually ended up trying them all and the end result is a mix of these alterations. Please read the comment section for great suggestions on how to alter pants.
Goodworks1 suggested I’d scoop out the back crotch, I did that and it improved the fit.
Debbie suggested I shorten the back inner seam, which was very helpful and took away excess fabric under the tush.
Geek sewing suggested pinching some fabric from the back leg, so I took in the back side seam a little which removed even more excess fabric.
Berry and Mary Nanna suggested that I lengthen the back crotch. The lack of room in the crotch was definitely a problem, but since I wanted the pants to be tight I ended up scooping the crotch instead. Normally that would make the pants too tight around the hips, but since I’ll use a stretch fabric that contains both rayon and linen (both notorious for their growth abilities) I don’t have to worry about that this time.
4 steps towards better fitting pants
1. I scooped out the back crotch, using another (well-fitting) pattern as a guide.
2. Lowered the back crotch seam 1,5 cm (3/5 inches)
3. Took in the back seam 1,5 cm (3/5 inches) in order to reduce some of the excess fabric in back.
4. Then I scooped out the front crotch a little to eliminate a slight camel toe. See Kathleen Fasanella’s tutorial.
As you can see it took a lot of tweaking, and I also found that some alterations had a counter effect on stuff that I had improved on before. That was the most frustrating part of the process and the reason why it took so many muslins. The pants are still not top notch, but I will settle for this. After a day of wear they will probably bag like crazy anyway, so fretting over it more is just not worth it.
I’m about to pack up my sewing machine, since we are moving next week and I wanted to get a head start with my pants before the chaos begins. I don’t know when I can resume the sewing, but in my next update I will have transfered my messy pattern pieces to cardboard so that I can show you the finished pattern and talk a little about the drafting process.
