Marrakesh Pants Progress Report

Finally moving on from the muslin stage: whoot! Here's my fabric for MPant #1 (assuming I love them and make more than one pair; not a sure thing, but I'm choosing optimism):

There's a bit of flash glare going on here, but you can see I'm using a teal cotton chambray (warp threads are bright teal, weft are black), which may or may not work well for the pattern in terms of weight (similar to linen) and drape (minimal). I chose it because I dearly want a pair of loose, light-weight pants to wear here in the winter, when it's often too cool for a short cotton skirt (but not cool enough for jeans) in the middle of the day, when I'm most likely to be out and about. I originally justified the purchase of this fabric (from Fabric.com last year sometime) by the thought that this color would be great on Mr. deHilo and that it might be nice to make him a shirt someday instead of just sewing for myself all the time. (Snort: who was I kidding?)

The pocket and waistband lining is a cotton that's been in the stash for many years, that I've been snipping away at for various quilt projects. It's a Liberty (Wm. Morris repro?) knockoff, nothing pricey. It will make me very happy to walk around with butterflies in my pockets, even if no one else knows they are there.

The pieces are now all cut out, and I will begin construction as soon as I finish this blog post and have one more mug of coffee in me. I would have started on the sewing yesterday evening, but I got distracted by something else (all Shelley's fault), which I will ramble about in my next post.

I cut the seams off my last muslin, traced the pieces onto lengths of butcher paper, then added seam allowance. I'll use the original pattern pieces for pockets, etc., my pattern for pant front and back. Here's a brief recap of fitting adjustments.

1) Back crotch curve:

These are close to the pattern 16 through the hip (I moved the HP piece a few inches up, so it doesn't cover my pattern lines). As you might be able to see here, I added about 2" in height at the center back waist, changed the crotch curve slightly, also extended crotch point a little. After all the tweaking, it came out closer to the original than I'd expected.

2) Front crotch curve:

I changed this curve more than the back, to a much gentler slope, That HP "J" shape did not fit me at all: weird pooching going on there on the first muslin. Took a few tries to get it right. Added to the height here as well, but not as much as at the back. I also added a distressing amount to the inner thigh. Maybe in a future version I will divide that extra more between front/back pieces, but this seems to work okay. Maybe in a future version I will have worked out more and not need all that inner-thigh pudge room. My front ended up at about the HP size 14 after tweaking excess from the hip.

3) Hip curve:

I'm happy to say it did occur to me I ought to make sure the outside pocket shape fits my hip curve, which it does. That's nice. Unfortunately, I forgot to add to pocket height when I cut them, so these may sit up higher than I'd like. If necessary I can nudge the pockets down a little by minimizing seam allowance at top and bottom. I doubt it will be a big issue.

The other adjustment I made was to correct the leg width. Somehow through the lengthy muslining process I'd managed to reduce the wide leg quite a bit. That's because my learn-to-fit-as-you-go method involved much trial and error, and at a couple points I tried resewing the out- or inseam to help correct the hang of the leg, when (as I eventually figured out) pulling up at the side hip works better. Anyway, as I was drafting the new paper back/front pieces I redrew the outseam from the hip point down to be perpendicular to the hem, and matching the original pattern leg width. I may decide that's too wide, but I can always taper in.

So, I'm ready to sew baste these up. I plan to baste the front and back together and try on one more time before adding the pockets, waistband, and fly front. More updates to come...