Megan Nielsen Dawn jeans, take 2 in yellow

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?

Megan Nielsen Dawn Jeans Odyssey

Making these jeans was not a quick, one day process.
It seems that somehow I really had not made jeans.  I mean, I'd made pants from jean material (here) and they were the second pair of pants I ever made!  They still fit well and get regular use!  So I didn't understand the hype about jeans until I realised all the topstitching actually takes time and different equipment.  I've been delaying making Ginger Jeans for about 2 years now, at least.  And then my most close to local fabric store, Miss Maude, had really nice looking non stretch Cone Mills denim and that was it.  (Is it sad that an online fabric store is all I can count as local?  Anyway, they are awesome!)

I trawled the internet for reviews, of course, people are not blogging like they used to but there are still a few posts out there.  Overall it seems that no one had any huge gripe about these and the instructions are top notch.  I reviewed the evidence and cut out my size based on my measurements - size 6, no alterations.

My waist is 27" and my hips are 37".
I measured the 11" front crotch and it actually seemed like it wouldn't be too high, so I didn't shorten it.  The only thing I did is add about 1cm to the calves because I thought between my slight knock knee and my large muscular calves I should never assume skinny jeans will fit.  Also it's better to have too much fabric than not enough. 

I got topstitching thread locally, it's Guterman without any other letters or numbers on it, and it might be lighter than usual topstitching thread, I'm not sure.  And I bought kits with rivets from Megan Nielsen to keep it simple and make sure I had everything I needed.

All this acquisition of supplies was great because it meant I could procrastinate on actually starting to make jeans.  I was binge making knits and getting sort of stressed because I really wanted to do these...but I was already really nervous.

My prep is that I actually followed the instructions.  I tested topstitching thread and adjusted my sewing machine tension which I basically never do.  I used Bernina jeans needles because my local store is Bernina (it's a terrible store with bad customer service and is probably the main reason I have a Babylock and not a Bernina overlocker, but I guess it's nice to at least be able to buy thread and needles locally.) 

I started the jeans while on night shift. It was actually a relief to do it that way.  I didn't have any time line to finish, and I could only do one thing and then I got too tired to sew.  The fly was probably the easiest fly instructions I've ever used.  It was so straightforward.

I will say - it's hard to find the online stuff for the Dawn Jeans on the Megan Nielsen website.  There apparently used to be an Ash jean sewalong, and it's been removed.  There are posts that refer to both Ash and Dawn, including the zipper tutorial that I used, so once you do find them you're sweet.  But it's too bad it no longer seems to come up as a set of links on the website.

Fly was good, pockets were good (I didn't have any pretty fabric to use on the pockets, sad!  I need to start sewing up my Liberty so that I have some scraps.) Crotch was fine, legs went well...waistbands, other than buttonholes, are my sewing nemesis.  I've never put on a waistband that I was truly happy with.  Plus now it had gotten to the weekend and I wanted to finish these nowwww!  And yes indeed, the waistband is where it went bad.  My sewing machine wanted to die.  In fact, it tried to die.  The topstitching thread was weaving nests on the bobbin side.  I changed needles to a leather needle, I changed tension, I really struggled.  It's mostly invisible but the fronts don't quite line up perfectly, due to how much I was stretching them and resewing that front corner.

Also on the interfacing:  I tried to interface.  It ripped.  You have to ease the waistband to the jeans, which is great, but unless you use nice stretchy interfacing, that won't happen.  I was using my shittiest stuff to get it used up and it was too firm, and then just ripped before I could ease the waistband at all.  So, I went without.  No loss.

In the end I figured out the problem - the IDT on the Pfaff can't do the heavy layers.  It's similar to what I learned with sewing lace.  The IDT is there for you and is amazing...until it's not.  I removed it to do the belt loops and though they are not perfect, I didn't have the huge tragic dramas that the waistband gave me.  I had a little trouble on the hems though, just enough to realise the problem wasn't over. The leather needle did help a lot though.  

After all that, I drew my buttonhole by hand and then used my newfound skills bar tacking!  I bar tacked the buttonhole!  It was so fantastic, I'm definitely going to use that technique for now.  Lately I'm learning the limitations of my fabulous sewing machine. (Buttonholes on waistbands where there are layers, topstitching...)  There's a dusty old Singer in this house and I am going to pull it out this week!

The rivets were also totally straightforward!  Amazing...

So the verdict, of course you want to know how they fit right?
They fit like store bought.  I had basted them and tried them on and knew they would be fine.
But what is happening - the crotch sits about maybe 1.5 inches below my crotch.  The legs are a bit too skinny at the top for my legs.  The waistband is great, the waist is great, but there's this extra fabric waiting to go somewhere.  This means that the butt pulls flat, because the butt is below my butt.  I don't know whether these will break in and fit well, or if they will break in and have a flat butt and have an inch of excess fabric bagging in the front crotch.  I'm curious about that.  So I've taken my pictures during the first wear so you can see how they look before I've done any squats in them.

I have a problem with the pocket openings, and I'm surprised no one else has noticed this.  They are tiny.  I can barely get my hand in there.  The pocket openings need to go lower and wider by a lot.  I will fix this. I think it'll improve the aesthetics of the front of the jeans too, and distract from those wrinkles that always happen in high waisted jeans over the belly.  

The next verdict is that despite this odyssey, I'm kind of addicted.  The simple precision of topstitching, the calm of a project I can't do too fast, the result being clothing I really want in my wardrobe...yep I'm hooked.  I have a summer pair of jeans planned and I am going to try tracing out the crotch fit from the Persephone pants onto these and see if that suits me better.  It might be a few weeks before I'm ready for that though!  In the meantime I have to finally make the pants I promised my cousin 9 months ago oooops.  My 2 year old UFO pile is much smaller than it was when I moved here but it still has a few things in it!  Unfortunately the rest of my luggage from the States will also arrive soon with even more UFOs, patterns and other sundry bits and pieces....