house potatoes

I think I’ve mentioned before that I have a hard time finding jeans and pants that I can wear to work (yay Silicon Valley dresscodes).  I don’t know why every single store sells low rises, because sitting down means an unflattering view of your butt/undies.  Also, it squishes all your fat out of the pants so that it pours over your waistband.

So, I bought, downloaded, printed, and taped together the Anita pants pattern from Burdastyle.  I’ve already cut out all the pieces, but had to raise the waistline 1.5 inches to make it medium rise, which made grading the pieces a bit fiddly.  Still need to buy all the material — I’d like to make it a gray twill with a slight stretch, but that seems hard to source.   Not quite ready to attempt jeans yet.

I’m hoping that posting about this will get me to put together a muslin.  In the meantime, you can look at Juebejue’s very cute Anita jeans (she also raised the waistband).

The pants sew-along started.

It is ridiculously quick and satisfying to put together and try on a pants muslin — I cut out and sewed the whole thing this evening (about 3-4 hours).

There is no way I am posting pictures of myself in a pants muslin. Most unflattering thing ever.

I made quite a few changes to the pattern in paper:

• took out 2″ height below the knee
• took out 5/8″ height above the knee
• graded from one size to 2 sizes down at the waist because of the next point
  (this gets wonky around the fly, pockets, waistband, and yoke unless you’re really careful.)
• most importantly, raised the waist by 1 1/2″
  (Burdastyle said they’d lowered it by that much, Juebejue also raised it by an inch, and I didn’t want the butt-hanging-out issue)

And guess what … the muslin fits perfectly, except that the waist is sitting 1 3/8″ too high.  Oops.  Guess I shouldn’t have assumed that the pattern lowered the waist too much.

Side notes for the Anita pants:
They don’t post the finished waist sizes, so I had to measure them out to figure out which ones to grade to.  Here you go:

• size 42 = 34 7/8 “
• size 40 = 33 1/4 “
• size 38 = 31 1/4 “
• size 36 = 30 “

Finally!

I bought even more fabric, so I figured I should start going back and finishing projects before I’m buried in a mountain of stash.  I had been planning on joining the MPB jeans sew-along back in May, but I missed even that (especially as they did everything in a single week).  I’m using the blog posts now though, as a really handy step-by-step of what to do.

So … I fixed the muslin first.  Lesson learned: if you want the waist higher, do NOT use the lengthen/shorten line across the hip.  That is for people with longer or shorter butts.  Instead, extend the waist/yoke up.  I ended up keeping the front waist, raising the back center yoke by ~1 inch, and taking in the top of the back center seam by ~1-1.5 inches.  The fitting aspect probably was the most painful part to do.

The rest has been mostly easy.  I’ve cut out all the pieces and sewn in the front pockets.

Materials: “Wrangler” twill + metal zipper from Britex, cute mermaid fabric I had laying around (from Eddie’s Quilting Bee) for the pockets and waistband lining.  I’d ordered some other twill online, but it was much too lightweight for pants.

My first ever pair of pants.  Top stitched and everything.

And … in action:

It’s rather difficult to figure out a way to photograph pant waists and fit without 1. removing your top or 2. having your shirt tucked in all frumpy.  I went for the bank-robber-victim pose.

I went through a spool and a half of topstitching thread. The waist does not gape at all when sitting down, which is exactly the reason I sewed these pants. Yay! There are many mistakes, but normal people probably won’t be able to tell.  Gory sewing details below.

——

For anyone sewing the Anita jean pattern:

• I recommend creating a fly shield, even though the pattern comes without one.  With the close fit in women’s jeans, you don’t really want to have to watch out for a metal zipper each time.
• There is a mistake? in the pocket step.
  Sew, don’t baste, the pocket opening fabrics together.  I have no idea why it tells you to baste the thing — it implies you’re supposed to pick it apart (don’t) and I used crappy colorful thread, which showed later on.
• There is a mistake? in the front pant pattern on the front fly stitching line (looks like a backward J).
  It showed the stitching line for the smallest 2 sizes, which has the crotch seam end / zipper start at a different point from all the other sizes.  It’s missing the stitching line for all the other sizes: the end of the J is supposed to be under the end of the zipper.  I didn’t know that and ran into trouble.

I ran into weird issues with a baggy back thigh area after I practically put the whole thing together. I was so annoyed.  The lovely experts at Pattern Review helped me figure out how to fix it.  It’s known as a Flat Seat Adjustment.  You have to take out just the fabric in middle of the back thigh because your butt is not as round as the pattern maker thinks it is.  Useful links:

• Pattern review thread where I got help, along with many pictures of my backside
• Excellent video explaining how to fix this in muslin in the first 20 min, by Silhouette Patterns (also goes over sewing jeans in general)
• Flat pattern fix, with a great set of photos in flickr