Friday, 20 March 2020

Sew house seven slacks, 2 variations

Version one was a success, I've worn them all summer. See here.

I wanted to make some changes to the pattern to turn it into my perfect lounge-linen pants pattern.

-Shortened the waistband by an inch total
-shortened the rise by a total of 2 inches in two separate locations

When I did this on the wide leg version, I had to do it on the short leg version too because I was too lazy to unpick my tape.

The wide version is out of a relatively loose weave silk from Nepal.  I'm pretty sure it's silk.  Once I put them on I was surprised by the heavy, clingy feel, which is what I'd expect from silk.  Also the only other fabric that I would have bought in Nepal is hemp and it doesn't have that texture.

But the loose weave - I thought it might be transparent so I added all the pockets and their excuse of a double layer.

The sewing up was straightforward, it's annoying that I can't write notes into PDF files!  So I had to read through my emails to find the seam allowances for the places in the pattern where they were missing. (I think I missed a chance to download an updated file.)  Otherwise, I have done this before so it was straightforward.









The elastic that fit in my casing was 1".
The changes are good. I suspect I need to be careful not to overfit this pattern - it's meant to be loose and drapey, after all.  Possibly because I am a lazy cutter-outer, the hems were totally mismatched, literally no two pieces were the same length.  So I cut each leg to be even, then matched the two legs and cut them even, and hoped that was right.  I didn't actually measure anything.

The clingy silk makes these into a kind of luxury wear, actually!

On to the narrow leg: well, why not some plaid, so they will be fancy winter sweatpants?  I have a new ruler and it makes shortening patterns amazingly easy!  No more hunting for straight edges and measuring things in 10 places, seriously, why didn't I have a ruler before?

These came together easily as now I'm a pro at this pattern.











I think honestly the linen is the best match for this type of fit.  In linen, it hangs down and the drape really advances the style.  In clingy lightweight flannel I don't think this is my most flattering effort.  Never fear, it'll be worn, it makes me instantly feel scruffy and cool, which is my favourite look.

I don't really like the shape of the narrower leg compared to the wide leg pattern - I think the wide leg pattern is basically perfect.  I did feel like I'd kind of overfit this one - also I might have been better off sizing down to the 4 instead of up to the 6, and it is possible that in a more drapey, heavy fabric, or in something with stretch, these pants would be totally fine.  Anyway now I have all the loose pants!  I will probably revisit this pattern for more linen pants in the future, but now I'm turning my attention back to jeans and work pants.  (And now I realise these would be perfect work pants, if only I had bought some black softshell fabric instead of all the greens...oops.)



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