Time to work on pants

It's time to start on pants. I wear jeans ALL the time, so when it comes to other pant styles, I sometimes am not sure what I think. For the most part, I can buy slacks without too much trouble. I'm fairly straight up and down, no defined waist (waist is TOO big) and no large hips.

I did make some pants last summer that weren't horrible, they fit fairly well, but they also weren't perfect.

There were a lot of good comments and reviews about the following pattern, so I decided to start there. Plus the pants I did before were also a Burda pattern. I need a slim fit through the hips and thighs otherwise I feel fat.

This pair is from the August 2009 Burda magazine.





I measured my hips in cm's without looking. I got 104 cms. Of course, that is right between sizes. A 42 is for a 102 cm hip and 44 for the 106 cm hip. I drew out a size 43, let's be technical here.

The trouble spot is the belly (and also the sway back and long back seam later.) I graded the pattern to the largest size, the size 46 right at the waist. I also straighted the CF seam to be on grain, which gave me another 1" at the waist (we'll see what happens with that.)

I had some white bottomweight fabric in my stash, got out my supply of sharpies and got to work.

Instead of adding my seam allowance to the pattern, I traced around the pattern, then did heavy sharpie dots to leak through to the other side. I added 1" seam allowances and more at the waist. I drew out the waistbands too. Oh, and I'm leaving out the pockets for fitting purposes.

Here's how my muslin looks now.



I did all sorts of drawing and writing on the pieces so I know what to compare with the original pattern.

But before I start to sew up this muslin I have a smelly torn horse blanket to repair. The darn horse just loves to rip it up. I really want to get that thing out of my sewing room...did I say SMELLY???!!!

Wish me luck with the muslin and the fitting. Maybe I'll get lucky.