I was pretty hyped up after I made my first Dawn jeans. (See them here.)
That turned out to be good news. I immediately pulled out my yellow fabric and pattern tracing paper and got working.
I removed 1" from the rise all the way around, sort of midway between the crotch and the waistband.
I deepened the pocket opening a whole heap* (more on this later.)
And I used the Persephone crotch to adjust the upper thighs. What I discovered, doing this, is that the Persephone wanted me to widen the upper leg and extend the kind of triangle bit of the crotch by quite a bit in the front. I would have expected to do changes in the back, but I trusted. I cut my pants out (cropped version.)
THEN I had to recover from my Dawn Jeans. This took awhile and if I hadn't done those adjustments I would have totally forgotten what I needed to do.
What finally spurred me was: going to Hamilton for sewing day with one of my best friends. I thought it would be great to get this huge project done in a dedicated day. I am still working through a sort of queue of projects and then I plan to take a big relax break. But each project takes time and energy, so it's nice to have the really big dramatic ones done and out of the way. I mean obviously I don't actually need any clothes.
I sewed this on a cheap Brother sewing machine. Tessa and I have sometimes been amazed how great this little mechanical workhorse goes, and this was a case in point. Her overlocker is DYING for a service so my overlocking is shabby, but I had no threadnesting even with the topstitching thread. Also, unlike all the other machines, it does a 4-step buttonhole. I was really happy to get my visible fly out of the way, knowing that at home I have NO functional buttonholing. Apparently the newer model of the Pfaff passport has added a manual buttonhole option. I like making jeans enough that I'm trying to figure out how to make it less miserable - another machine? Like an industrial one? What can I do to actually have a machine that will make buttonholes?
I had to leave off before adding the waistband, sadly, and more sadly in retrospect because then I had to do it at home. I did learn from my first Dawn experience. I took off the IDT early and I bar tacked the belt loops. I used a jeans needle for everything and I also didn't stress too much about the heaps of bird nests inside my waistband.
These jeans, as I commented on instagram, were all about just getting them done and worn. I didn't aim for perfection. The Brother machine didn't do particularly straight topstitching, and the quilting foot made it hard to actually measure my 2 rows of stitches against each other. Those were the trade-offs for using that machine. My Pfaff makes visibly neater, straighter topstitching.
I worked through all the dramas in one big push because of course I had already tried these on and knew that I'd achieved a jeans nirvana regarding fit.
It worked! My Persephone adjustments worked!
Unfortunately, my changes to the pocket were ill-advised. I still can't really get my hands into the pockets because now the openings are flush against my hips, AND the less fabric in that area, due to dipping the curve of the pocket, means they pull open. Drat! I'm going to wear these around and see if the settling of the fabric improves the problem, otherwise I might even decide, horror, to sew them shut.
Other note: I used my second Megan Nielsen hardware kit for these, so I didn't source the bits myself. Easy. I even went crazy and added another label inside.
Arg now I'm TOTALLY addicted to making jeans. Help! I have even printed out the Ginger pattern. When will sewing not be a slippery slope?
That turned out to be good news. I immediately pulled out my yellow fabric and pattern tracing paper and got working.
I removed 1" from the rise all the way around, sort of midway between the crotch and the waistband.
I deepened the pocket opening a whole heap* (more on this later.)
And I used the Persephone crotch to adjust the upper thighs. What I discovered, doing this, is that the Persephone wanted me to widen the upper leg and extend the kind of triangle bit of the crotch by quite a bit in the front. I would have expected to do changes in the back, but I trusted. I cut my pants out (cropped version.)
THEN I had to recover from my Dawn Jeans. This took awhile and if I hadn't done those adjustments I would have totally forgotten what I needed to do.
What finally spurred me was: going to Hamilton for sewing day with one of my best friends. I thought it would be great to get this huge project done in a dedicated day. I am still working through a sort of queue of projects and then I plan to take a big relax break. But each project takes time and energy, so it's nice to have the really big dramatic ones done and out of the way. I mean obviously I don't actually need any clothes.
I sewed this on a cheap Brother sewing machine. Tessa and I have sometimes been amazed how great this little mechanical workhorse goes, and this was a case in point. Her overlocker is DYING for a service so my overlocking is shabby, but I had no threadnesting even with the topstitching thread. Also, unlike all the other machines, it does a 4-step buttonhole. I was really happy to get my visible fly out of the way, knowing that at home I have NO functional buttonholing. Apparently the newer model of the Pfaff passport has added a manual buttonhole option. I like making jeans enough that I'm trying to figure out how to make it less miserable - another machine? Like an industrial one? What can I do to actually have a machine that will make buttonholes?
I had to leave off before adding the waistband, sadly, and more sadly in retrospect because then I had to do it at home. I did learn from my first Dawn experience. I took off the IDT early and I bar tacked the belt loops. I used a jeans needle for everything and I also didn't stress too much about the heaps of bird nests inside my waistband.
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These jeans, as I commented on instagram, were all about just getting them done and worn. I didn't aim for perfection. The Brother machine didn't do particularly straight topstitching, and the quilting foot made it hard to actually measure my 2 rows of stitches against each other. Those were the trade-offs for using that machine. My Pfaff makes visibly neater, straighter topstitching.
I worked through all the dramas in one big push because of course I had already tried these on and knew that I'd achieved a jeans nirvana regarding fit.
It worked! My Persephone adjustments worked!
Unfortunately, my changes to the pocket were ill-advised. I still can't really get my hands into the pockets because now the openings are flush against my hips, AND the less fabric in that area, due to dipping the curve of the pocket, means they pull open. Drat! I'm going to wear these around and see if the settling of the fabric improves the problem, otherwise I might even decide, horror, to sew them shut.
Other note: I used my second Megan Nielsen hardware kit for these, so I didn't source the bits myself. Easy. I even went crazy and added another label inside.
Arg now I'm TOTALLY addicted to making jeans. Help! I have even printed out the Ginger pattern. When will sewing not be a slippery slope?
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