I’ll bet you’re all enjoying my pants-fitting saga so much, you’re wishing it will never end!
So I hope I don’t disappoint you by presenting the final (?) chapter in the story.
Picking up from Round 6, I prepared Muslin F, based on all the changes I had hacked into Muslin E. Let’s take a look.
Time for a long-overdue update on my work with pants fitting. The project has gone slower than I would have liked, between a combination of work-related issues, and life events (fun ones!) that have kept me from the sewing room.
But it’s now time to post an update on where I stand with the pants, and also about my experiences working with Sarah Veblen as a “fitting coach”. I’ll cover my experience working with Sarah over two blog posts; this is the first. Continue reading
My quest to find the perfect fitting pair of pants continues, but work-related drama has been consuming my time and energy. So apologies for the slowdown here on the blog, and I hope this is only a temporary state of affairs.
I thought this round of alterations was going to take me very close to something ideal, or at least something I would move to a test pair with. Instead, I was very disappointed with the changes I’ve made and I feel like I’ve taken some steps backwards.
But first, let’s go over what I did to the pattern after Muslin D, before we talk about what didn’t work out.
Here’s Muslin D deconstructed, pressed, and laid out on my work table. The front piece (to the right) has two different front crotch curves I experimented with, and the back piece has a back crotch curve that has been scooped a little bit more. You can also just see see the purple markings where I added to the back crotch by letting out at the inseam. The side seams are also marked where I pinned out excess curvature at the hip.
“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.
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.
The changes that went into muslin D were:
Front pattern piece. Blue line is the old side seam line, pencil is the new seam line, red is the new cut line.
I’ll announce the winner of the Japanese Pattern Book Giveaway tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s get back to fitting pants.
I had three goals for the next muslin, which we’ll call Muslin C:
Here’s the pattern alterations I did.
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.
