Monthly Archives: May 2015

Vogue 8940 Pants Fitting, Round 4

“If I learned anything from my shirtmaking years, it was that fitting is a huge challenge that can easily eat up all your available sewing time and block all further progress, if you let it.”

— David Page Coffin, “Making Trousers”

I got quite a lot of quality time in this weekend with my pants muslin, and I believe I’ve made some significant progress.

Muslin D

I’m not sure I can call this pattern Vogue 8940 any more; I’ve customized it so much that at this point it has become truly my own.  And once I dial in the fit, I will have to draft new facings, front fly, and waistband pieces to match the customized pattern pieces I’ve created.

Pattern Alterations

The changes that went into muslin D were:

  • Add roughly 1/2 inch to the front and back side seams of Muslin B. For Muslin D, I walked and trued front and back seams, and added about a half inch to both for a total of two inches extra circumference at the hip.

Front pattern piece. Blue line is the old side seam line, pencil is the new seam line, red is the new cut line.

IMG_1944 Continue reading →

Japanese Pattern Book Winner, and New Patterns!

Thank you to everyone who entered the Japanese Pattern Book contest.  I really appreciated hearing what you think of the blog, as well as the suggestions for projects for me to work on.

One surprise was the votes of support for non-garment projects such as the recent Duffel Bag project. It was gratifying to hear there’s a segment of my readership that really likes those types of projects, and I definitely have more planned for the future.

There were a total of 14 entrants to the contest.  The Internet Random Number Generator picked the winner.

japanese_pattern_drawing

The lucky winner was reader “Auschick in VA”, 12th in the list of entrants:

japanese_pattern_book_winner Continue reading →

Vogue 8940 Pants Fitting, Round 3

I’ll announce the winner of the Japanese Pattern Book Giveaway tomorrow.  In the meantime, let’s get back to fitting pants.

Previously, on Vogue 8940 Pants Fitting

I had three goals for the next muslin, which we’ll call Muslin C:

  1. 1/2″ tuck in front and back, to raise the crotch point closer to my body.
  2. More scoop to the back crotch in the back, to create more front-back space for my seat.
  3. Add width along the back side seam to compensate for the circumference taken out by the crotch scoop.

Here’s the pattern alterations I did.

Half-inch tuck

The half-inch tuck was a pretty simple alteration to front and back.  Consulting with Sarah Veblen in the class forum, I decided to avoid the lengthen-shorten line provided by Vogue, because theirs goes right through the crotch curve.  However, taking the tuck higher up means I’ll need to draft new front pocket facings for sure.

Front Tuck

IMG_1891 Continue reading →