we have pants.

presenting version #xx? of the eva dress 1945 trousers. the fit still needs some work, but i think i'm getting close. i've never had a pair of pants that fit well, so that's what's behind my obsession with getting the pattern right. i'm hoping to come out of all this with a workable pants sloper to use in creating any style pants i want.

the next step is to buy some cheap wool suiting fabric, something with a little less drape than the fabric i used for these, & give it another go.


notes:

1) the pants weren't long enough to accommodate a 3-fold cuff (1.25" per fold), so i had to attach extra fabric to the bottoms to make the cuffs. i'll need to adjust the pattern for this.

2) the waist needs to be taken in another 2". i'll try to accomplish this by adjusting the back darts & see what happens.

3) i had to redraft the original waistband pattern piece because it came up short when i was attaching it to the pants waist. i also wanted an extension flap for the buttonhole, so i added some length for that. after i take the waist in another 2", i'll remeasure the waistband piece.

4) the vertical line in the front still needs to be shortened another 2" & the vertical line at the back needs to be shortened another 1 3/4". that's a total of 7" vertical inches removed from the original pattern pieces, so you can imagine how low the crotch was to begin with.

the trousers.

dennis the menace & i finally saw Inglourious Basterds & loved it.

really nice work by Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz & Mélanie Laurent & the costumes designed by (Anna B. Sheppard) were fantastic.

the more ladylike suits, dresses, hats & shoes were obvious attractors, but my favorite costume was the wide-legged trousers & boiled wool jacket worn by actress Mélanie Laurent:


this is what Sheppard has to say about them:

COF: Is Mélanie Laurent wearing men’s period trousers when working outside the cinema?

AS: Melanie’s trousers were a period version of modern dungarees with a detachable bib, which she wore both ways. Again, these were to go against the grain of floral dresses and small patterns that were associated with the period. They were made in Berlin, according to my design.

given the current fit issues with my 1945 trousers project, i would love to get a closer look at those pants to see where the waist & crotch hit.


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images/quote source: Clothes on Film

wait.

tonight during my workout, i was thinking about how to make cuffs when (the alternative version of) this song came into my head:

Do your ears hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot? Can you tie them in a bow? Can you throw them o'er your shoulder like a continental soldier? Do your ears hang low?

it's obvious to me now that a low-hanging crotch is totally unacceptable & i must rip the pants apart, redraw the pattern & lose another 2 vertical inches at the top.

the repurposed zipper will not survive & the pants might not survive, but at least they won't be hanging low.

progress: eva dress trousers.

remember these?

it's been a couple of months since i've sewed, but this weekend i finally got back to it and made some progess on these trousers.

awhile back, i bought some fabric for $2.99/yard from the cheap fabric place. i don't know what the fabric is, but it's stretchy and very drapey and although i didn't plan it that way, it turned out to be perfect for this style of pants.

i got rid of 2 vertical inches at the top of the pants in the paper version--



--but now that i've sewn together the fabric version, i can see that the crotch still hangs pretty low & the waist is still really high. i thought about starting over and redrawing the pattern pieces again, but the truth is you can't really tell the crotch is low due to the combo of drapey fabric & super-wide legs. plus the pants are really swingy and comfortable so who cares about the super-high waist & that is how you keep everything moving forward.

the pants are now put together with lining & a zipper that did not go in without a fight. the zipper had seen better days because it was repurposed from the failed skirt reconstruct project, but i eventually won.

i decided not to make these overalls, so the only thing left to do is make the waistband belt and then i can put some cuffs on them.

cuffs! i've never done cuffs before, but i can't wait.



as a side note, the sewing machine is getting louder and more clanky. i clean & oil it regularly so i'm not sure what all the noise is about. it wasn't an expensive machine, but until i get my Domestic sewing machine from dennis the menace (we still haven't figured out the best way to get it from vegas to sf), i really need this one to keep going.

paper pants.

since my last 2 sewing projects are 100% complete (i still need to take some photos of the lavender jumper), i'm moving on to the Eva Dress 1945 trousers pattern that my mom got me for christmas last year.

this pattern is a size 20 (32" waist, 41" hip) , so i was prepared to grade the pattern down 1-2 sizes to fit me. i figured i'd probably massacre the pattern pieces during the grading process, so i decided to do a pre-muslin with swedish tracing paper.

first i sewed the pants together to check the sizing prior to grading. the waistband (& this is without the additional facing to build it up) was at my bustline. also, the crotch was hanging too low and the pants were ridiculously long.

before doing an overall pattern grade, i decided to try to get rid of some vertical inches at the top of the pants. using the pants front & back diagrams from the threads chart below, i removed 2" from the upper part of the pants at lines 30 and 36.


image source: threads

to do this, i measured 10.5" up from the crotch & drew a line across. then i drew another line 2" above the first, folded over the excess tracing paper, reblended the lines on the sides & sewed the pants back together.

&-- it was a pretty good fit!





now i'm ready to create a muslin out of fabric, using these newly-sized pattern pieces. i'm sure there will be more alterations once i get working with fabric, but hopefully this initial grading took care of the biggest problem.

about the swedish tracing paper- this stuff is great. there's no drape obviously, but the paper is pretty strong. it withstood multiple pulls of basting threads & 2 rounds of sewing.