Sewing with Patterns:: Pants

Are you like me? Do you have a stash of sewing patterns? Are these sewing projects calling your name?

In my New Year’s Re-SEW-lutions I declared that I would learn how to sew pants along with continuing to teach you how to sew. Time to get on that.

For my first pants project I will be using Vogue Pattern V2948. The pattern is part of the Pants Fitting/Pants Construction Craftsy Classes (See the button below on the right FMI.)  I do not think the pattern is available in the Vogue Pattern Catalog ~ you would  have to sign up for the Craftsy class in order to get this particular pattern.

Before diving into this project, I checked out a few sewing blogs to see if anyone had an opinion. Pattern Review had several good reviews on the pattern and it was made up by women of varying sizes ~ with lots of positive reviews. Perfect ~ now I’m ready to dive in.

OK, I’ve chosen a pattern which also has a fitting class. I’m feeling positive ~ I can do this. This cannot be that hard.

For this step I like to have a cup of coffee. It’s more relaxing that way. I opened the pattern, pulled out the pattern pieces, and read through ALL of the directions.

Next {and I consider this very important} I pressed the wrinkly pattern with a DRY iron. No steam, please. Just hot, dry heat. Think about it, if you have a wrinkled pattern, how are you ever going to get a good fit? If you use steam, you will have wet tissue paper ~ I’m just saying….dry heat.

See the difference. It is so much easier to work with a nice, smooth pattern.

The next step I’m not going to show you because it involves me in my underwear; it’s choosing the correct size. Fortunately, this pattern is sized for real women and comes in a ton of sizes. Take true measurements {the video series shows how to do this} and then match them to your size on the pattern. I went with my waist measurement {which I refuse to share) and will adjust accordingly.

You would think that the next step is trimming the pattern in my exact size ~ Wrong-O. Instead, I like to rough trim around my pattern pieces and leave all the sizes on the tissue paper. I adjusted the length in both the crotch and leg and then outlined my size with a colored pencil.

That’s as far as I got and I’m happy with it for now. If you look closely at the pattern picture above, you will notice that the pants have  a princess seam down the front {and the back, too}. That means I made all of these adjustments to four pattern pieces (two for the front, two for the back). The seam is going supposed to make size adjustment a lot easier.

The next step will be to make a muslin out of this pattern. I am still not going to cut out the tissue pattern. Instead, I’m going to trace my pattern pieces onto muslin. I will be back with an update as soon as I tackle this. But first, I have to get my Flu Shots Tonic ready for y’all. The new moon is almost here.