PANTS

Sure, I’ve been doing a bit of sewing over the summer and never got around to blogging about any of it.  So what’s dragged me out of the non-blogging stupor?

PANTS.  In capital letters because they’re not just pants, they’re PANTS.  HUGE PANTS.

Long story short, I finally got around to drafting a pants pattern just before I moved out of the share house in Melbourne, and I tested it by making a pair of shorts for me (which are ok but not mind-blowing), and a pair of pyjama shorts for my sister, which have the best stripe matching since the beginning of time.  Which sadly I can’t show you, because I can’t for the life of me find the photo.  You’ll just have to believe me.  The stripe-matching was mind-blowing.  EVERY SEAM.  EVERY STRIPE.

Forgive these shorts for they are not ironed. 

The main flaw in the more boring, less stripy test-pants was that the proportions are off by a smidge.  So they’re kind of tight in the hips but saggy in the butt.  I think this is because the standard figure for which the block is meant to be is more of a usual shape with a more pronounced butt and less pronounced hips, whereas I don’t really have a butt, but I’ve got hips for days.

Then I moved up to my parent’s for a month, and I made another pair of shorts (or short culottes really), which again aren’t mind-blowing, but I was working with remnant fabric so I didn’t exactly have room to play around a lot.  I also sewed my first fly-front, using mostly this tutorial, and it was vastly easier than I expected.

Slightly disappointed by those shorts (though now I have no idea why because they’re actually super cute), I then made a shirt out of super-gauzy grey checked cotton with a pussy-bow instead of a collar, because by this point I’m just enjoying farting around with the shirt pattern and seeing how far I can push it.

How much bow is too much?  Am I bowverdoing it? Geddit? … ?

After that I started working at OA for the schools company, and I’ve pretty much lived in activewear for the past two or three months, and had very little reason to sew anything.

But then I saw a pair of pants in COS, and they were green wool, high-waisted and super wide-leg, like palazzo pants and flares went and had a baby together.  These weren’t pants, they were PANTS.  And even though I didn’t think I needed giant pants before, suddenly there was a gaping hole in my wardrobe that only PANTS could fill.  They’d be Going Out PANTS, Family Occasion PANTS, even maybe Audition PANTS in the right circumstances.  They’d magically look put-together and insouciant at the same time.   They’d trick people into thinking they were a skirt and then BAM I’d take a stride and they would shockingly reveal that they are actually PANTS.  They’d be massively comfy and make up for the fact that I’d probably only want to wear them with stilettos.

But they didn’t have them in my size anywhere.

So I got my pants block, went through the motions of adjusting it for extra fullness as suggested in the Fashion Supplement at the back of More Dress Pattern Designing, and then slashed up to the darts, closed them off and taped in a heap of extra fullness at the bottom.  I won’t deny that looking at the pattern freaked me out a bit.  They could so easily turn into Circus PANTS, which I didn’t want.  Especially seeing the soft wool twill I got was a bit expensive, and they were going to use A LOT of it.

As in really A LOT of it.

But they went together really easily.  I just used pinking shears so I didn’t have to finish anything, I popped in a side zip and then I hemmed them using a method called Stack Two Books on the Floor and Try and Pin the Hem Up So It Sits Level With the Top of the Books While Checking in the Mirror and Then Swear A Lot When It’s Fiddly and Time Consuming and I Wish Emily Was Here to Help Me But Now We Live Interstate and URGH.

Manga isn’t just entertaining, it’s useful.

The hem itself was originally going to be a micro-hem, but then I decided a folded-up-twice hem would make it sit better.

Surprisingly neat, all things considered.

And now I have PANTS.

They’re stealthy.  You think they’re a skirt, but no!

They are in fact PANTS!

What’s huge and dark green and coming to get you?  PANTS

I highly recommend them.  Make yourself some PANTS.