February’s challenge for The Monthly Stitch was Smarty Pants.
Pants shopping for me is pure torture.
Here is an old post where I vent after one particularly distressing pants shopping expedition, if you are interested.
In my filing cabinet I have a few pant/trouser patterns but I love a good bootleg/flared pant – I don’t care what the “fashion” people say, bootleg/flare is always “in” in my books! Since Kat and I both have the Sewaholic Thurlow pattern we decided to make those up together for another Twinsies shoot.
Oh, yeah! We made Twinsies Pants!
We’ve both been super busy so we took these photos during lunchtime at Frank Kitts Park where we found one of Wellington’s many awesome sculptures. This one is Fruits of the Garden by Paul Dibble.
Pants are kind of hard to photograph…but it’s easier with a friend…and fun backdrop 🙂
Fun waistband lining? Check!
Back pockets? Check!
This was my first Sewaholic pattern from the envelope. Previously I have printed off PDFs for pattern testing only so I was really surprised at how thin the tissue paper was, probably the thinnest I have ever encountered. I am on Team: Trace All The patterns and it wasn’t the easiest to work with.
Since I had high hopes for this pattern I copied on to thicker tracing film for durability – I am hoping I can tweak this to become my “go to” solution to my pants shopping woes.
I selected some poly/viscose/spandex suiting out of my stash, bought with trousers in mind way back in March 2010. The pattern envelope stated 2.30m would be required for my width of fabric but I only had 1.60m, oops!
I am always up for a good pattern layout challenge so with Harriet’s help I did a test layout:
Harri’s face says it all, “2.30 meters? ‘sif! It totally fits!”
She loves hindering helping!
I cut all my the lining pieces from a cute quilting cotton that I picked up from one of my last trips to AT, it has teeny tiny fruits on it!
I really like the final result, they fit quite well (although a little tight at the moment since I’ve been slack in my gym attendance 😉 ) and give me the professional look I was after. I can see myself making up a few more pairs and maybe even the shorts version.
The back waist band is in two pieces which lets you stitch a snugger fit, no gaping, yeah! I also like the generous back extension and the sewing order makes it easy to adjust the whole fit as you sew.
I do feel the rise is a little low so next pair I will try to correct this.
The instructions are good, I haven’t made pants in ages and I managed fine with them however I do wish the right and wrong sides of the lining pieces had been marked on the diagrams. This slowed me down a little because I wanted to make sure the printed side of my cotton ended up inside the pockets.
Imagine if I’d gotten it wrong? I wouldn’t be able to show others the awesome hiddeness of my pockets! But I worked it out eventually and marked my instructions for next time.
Welt pockets, so sexy!
The back welt pockets instructions and fly construction were really clear but I found some of the waistband diagrams a bit misleading, more notes added for next time 🙂
I chose not to “stitch in the ditch” to secure the inside of my waistband and hand stitched it down instead. I find that machine stitching can often look messy in this instance. It didn’t take me very long and between this and the hemming my hand stitching is really improving.
Make sure you check out Kat’s awesome denim Cat’s Meow Thurlows over on her blog too 🙂
THE DEETS:
Pattern – Sewaholic 1203 Thurlow trousers, straight size 8
Fabric –
- 1.60m of 148cm wide Poly/viscose/spandex suiting from Fabulous Fabrics, Perth, purchased March 2010 for AUD$22.95
- Quilting cotton from Arthur Toye, Wellington
Other notions – 1 button (from stash), metal pants slider thingee
Big thank you to Sandra for playing photographer, you rock 🙂
the curious kiwi 