SSS day 23
Self-stitched September, day 23.
I can never remember if the autumn equinox means the last day of summer or the first day of fall. I’m wearing linen pants regardless.
I made these pants a few months ago, using the pattern and fitting tips from Sunni’s Trouser Sewalong archives. They’re in a heavy, slightly slubby linen bought at Elfriede’s when I was feeling flush, with a silk organza underlining.
I was mostly interested in making pants just to see what the experience was like. I went through four—four!—muslins to try to get the fit right. Pants fittings always seem like some kind of mysterious alchemy to me; one change can have a cascading affect on the fit, and none of it seems terribly intuitive to me. You change one thing and it all goes to hell, or everything suddenly lines up, and you have no idea why.
Part of the problem, too, is that I don’t think I actually know what pants are supposed to fit like. Is that a bad wrinkle or a good wrinkle? What’s a drag line? Is that puffiness the pants, or my body under the pants? Who knows?
In the end, I altered the pattern (Burda 07-2010-127) to have a narrower fit through the hip and leg and had to futz a lot of things around the crotch. I think they were the right things to do, but it’s an open question.
Things I did: I underlined in silk organza to help with wrinkling and bagging out around the bum after a day of sitting. That seems to have worked well, but I can never get underlining to look nice inside, especially because I often leave at least the final fit tweak for garment construction. So many of the self-bound finishes seem to count on the drafting being perfect to begin with.
So the inside of these is a hot mess. Oh, well.
Things I wish I’d done: I wish I’d stayed the pockets to keep them from gaping. Next time. And there’s still something a little wrong around the low hip—they’re flare-y, like there’s just too much fabric. I don’t know. I may revisit these in a year or so, and see if I have some more knowledge I can bring to the pattern.
But at any rate, I feel very, very tall in these pants. They’re super-comfortable and cool in the summer. Pants making: Success(ish)!
