Easy peasy pants

Having missed a couple of months I am delighted to be back posting on TMS.

My first choice of pattern for the Smarty Pants challenge was the Sewaholic Thurlow, but for various reasons I have been a bit short on time this month, so I decided to go with a fairly simple pattern, with not too many pieces and (I hoped) minimal fitting issues. Luckily I had this very easy Vogue pattern in my stash.

Having seen some of the fantastically well fitted jeans and trousers some of the other Monthly Stitchers have been churning out I do feel that going for something so loose fitting might be a bit of a cop-out, but I am actually pretty happy with the result.

Rather than do any kind of muslin business I just pinned them on to myself after sewing the inner leg seams but before sewing the outer seams, and made adjustments from there. I needed to take an additional inch from each side (and remember to do the same with the waistband). At this point I also took a bit off the overall width of the legs.

I was going to use my serger on the seams, but it is not working and I can’t work out what is wrong with it, so I just used a zigzag stitch instead.

I made pocket bags and waistband facing from scraps leftover from my parrot Elizalex. Apart from taking some of the width out of the legs my only change to the pattern was to add a couple of extra belt loops and make a self- fabric belt.

This claims to be a very easy pattern, and it really is. I couldn’t quite work out the instructions for the zipper, but I just did what felt right and it worked out fine. The trousers close at the top with trouser hook and bar fasteners – the buttons are merely cosmetic – so there are not even any buttonholes to fret over. The pockets are in seam, which further simplifies things, so it only took a few hours total to make these.

Next time I would take a bit more width out of the leg, and would also take another half inch out of the waistband, but I will definitely get some wear out of these as they are.

As ever, you could check out my blog, but you’ll just find this post with some additional bonus rambling.