Me Made May, week 2

Well hello again.
This week of Me-Made-May included the following, a lot of which is unblogged!  Posts of those unblogged items will follow once I have gotten some suitable pictures.

Thurlow Jeans
Many of the same things from last week
New Mabel miniskirt x 2 (I wore both of them, a lot)
Ondee top
Persephone pants
Briar in yellow (unblogged and likely to remain that way.  I have nothing new to say about this top)
Cocoon cardigan
silk Penny top
mystery swimsuit no. 2

I am happily at work in my pants-binge.  I have to say that the amazing new pants patterns coming out are overwhelming me with the quality of their instructions, the quality of my results, and I'm really excited to see the final 2 pairs (of 4 planned) as they become real,wearable things!  I've avoided making pants for awhile because I have so many awesome pants from op-shops/consignment shops that I don't really NEED to make pants.  But a girl can only make so many tshirts before she has to expand the me-made wardrobe a bit...

Terra Cotta Sewaholic Thurlow linen trousers

I am in some kind of crazy groove.  Everything is coming out amazing lately.  I am preparing to move and although I am so so happy to see all these great projects, I wouldn't mind a few things that need to be donated to friends!  Haha not the usual thing to complain about.

On these Thurlows I changed three things.
1. fly on left side.
2. flat felled the outside legs (note: don't do this...)
3. back pockets are from the Grainline Maritime.

I cut out a size 0.  The first time I made these was also my first time making fly-pants, after reading a bunch of books and measuring crotch seams, and I cut a size 4 and used high stretch jean fabric, and I made a bunch of weird modifications to the crotch because I thought I knew a lot.  So, don't do that!  You will endure a lot of pins in the crotch trying to fix massive pants!  For some reason, I guess because Sewaholic is for pears, if you are not a pear, size down a LOT in these pants.  I sized down 2 sizes!

So, the fly switching can be a bit puzzling for the brain but I did it correctly, even the interfacing was cut properly the first time, hurrah!!  I made this basically in one afternoon.  And it was going sooo well that I thought I would flat fell the outside legs, as in, why have I never done this before?  The reason is because you have to change the order if you want to flat fell, so that you have one side open...I flat felled AFTER sewing the inner leg.  It was kind of harrowing and it involved a flat-fell learning curve.  One side looks a bit bad  The other side looks ok.  But anyway I am so impressed with my flat felling that I don't care.

Photo credits: Senka Stojanovic, in the King's Gardens in Copenhagen.  She took such nice pictures that I posted them all!  On their first day of fresh air these pants got a lot of bike time, beer drinking time and other assorted fun, and they held up amazingly.  As an aside - to show off to Senka how much I've made, I had a fully self-made wardrobe in Copenhagen.  I don't wear a big variety of clothing so this was a chance for things to shine that I think I haven't worn more than a few times in two years!

Let's just pretend they're even, ok?

Learning curve.

I lined these with leftover fabric from my Vogue star dress, and for the waistband - I am always confused by waistbands.  They are too long, too short, they don't overlap properly, who knows. Anyway so I didn't sew the lining together in the back, I folded each side down separately.  And I think the tab in the front is too short because the two buttons almost touch.

For once I don't mind the messy touches.  I really like these pants!

Sewaholic Thurlow Jeans

It just happened that my first Thurlows would be jeans.  The awesome dark Theory jean fabric (with some stretch) was on sale during my visit to the States...and I'm actually quite glad because I think that I'm much more exacting with jeans compared to other pants.  My Vogue pants, for instance, are a miracle because I can wear them.  The idea of getting them to fit precisely was so far beyond me when I made them! 

Jeans aren't like that!  They have to fit just-so.  Quite awhile ago I read up on making trousers, measured my crotch depth and length, and measured the crotch depth and length of all my favourite trousers.  Interestingly, the variation was less than an inch!  I also tried to spy ahead of time what sort of changes I should expect to make.  I read some of Katherine Fasanella's diatribes about camel toe and I can even admit to spying on butts in the city identifying flat-butt-jeans (made that way because it uses less fabric).

With all that behind me, when I cut out my Thurlows I felt (rather mistakenly...) like I already knew something, and added in all these changes.  I deepened the J of the crotch for what I diagnosed as a low-slung butt (no perky cheeks for me, sadly) by going from the size 4 line down to 0, then from there I extended the crotch depth by continuing out to the size 8 line, and then smoothed that back to a size 4 about 3 inches down.  Haha, so see what happens next...were my changes good or stupid??  It was almost torture to go through the sewing piece by piece!

Those butt wrinkles are nothing compared to what I started with.

WTF that stupid fly is going to fly away it's so far to the right!  ARG!!!

I prepped by reading lladybird's sewalong two or three times, so that I had a better feel for what each piece would be doing, and it was a very very helpful crutch along the way.  As a few have mentioned, the explanations in the instructions are sparse.  About 12 steps are listed in each numbered "step" and if you haven't done trousers before it can be rather puzzling.  With the sewalong providing pictures along the way it was easy not to get confused. Tasia never tells you whether the lining fabric should be face up or down!  Nobody really gives advice on finishing stuff - like when/how do you actually sew the back butt/waistband together without crazy mismatching?  Should I just know this?

I had heard that the Thurlows run big, but in the end...my changes were so very irrelevant.  Big was not quite the word.  Once I had sewn everything together and got my mind around the architecture of a crotch seam, I started taking in fabric.  I took in about 2 inches at the inseam extending to about 5 inches below the knee.  Then I took in as much as I could from the bottom of the zip to the end of the butt along the crotch seam.  Then I took 1 cm off each side seam (I wanted to keep my pockets!) starting just below the pocket and extending that to 2 cm below the knees.  After all this I still took about 2 more inches out of the final centre-butt tab.  I almost overdid it once I got the waistband on - tried to taper the waistband and got a weird poofy bit.  In order to straighten that I had to take another small chunk out of the middle butt...and in the end it's crazy!  They fit!!  Oh yeah - this is why you do a muslin...I should have cut a straight size 0 and gone from there.  If my fabric had zero stretch a size 2 might have been good.  I would have a really hard time putting all my changes to paper though.

The main thing that drives me crazy is that the fly is on the wrong side, so when I look down the jeans look lopsided with the right hand fly.  Also the 4-way butt intersection where the waistband meets is still puffy due to my last minute ridiculous tapering idea.  I couldn't fix it quite enough, apparently.  But they are comfortable to wear, so I will chalk them up as a success.  I think a non-stretch, non-jean version of Thurlows would get a very different result!