Pants, Hopefully the Last Installment

This is a pile of my fitting books, including the binder on top of old Threads articles.  Not even all of them because I stopped clipping them years ago when I realized I often wanted the article on the other side.  

It seems that pants fitting has consumed my life for years. Of course I made other garments, but what I thought about most was fitting pants, looking at pants, obsessing about pants.   Now, hopefully I can move on to other, more interesting projects.  Not that I won't make pants, but I won't be blogging about them.   Unless I make some other pattern, but this one has had it's day.  I can endlessly tweak it, but that isn't interesting enough to talk about.  Jeans are actually in my future, but that's for another day.

Readers thought that the gray pants were my altered pair. They are not.  They aren't bad, but they had annoying issues.  Because they are from a drapey fabric it just isn't as obvious.  Soft fabric softens all the wrinkles while a stiffer fabric is much more unforgiving and shows everything
With Claire's help I dealt with the last of the annoying little issues and they really weren't all that big, but I got really obsessive here!

The first pair is a brown tweed with no stretch and the second pair is black twill, also no stretch, both from sales at Michael's.  These are much less forgiving fabrics than my light gray linen and lycra.  The first pair is  pretty perfect.  In the second I decided to narrow the knee another 1/2", which is a total of 2".  Too much for my tilted pelvis.  I could remove more room above back crotch, but I'd also like to sit down.  So, while I like how these look in front, if I want to make narrower knees I either need to accept the wrinkles in back or make them wider.  It's a trade off.  I finished a pair of gray cotton with lycra pants yesterday. I have to say that I am beginning to prefer pants without lycra.  They don't stretch out and bag in the rear end.  They don't have to be sewn so tight that they show lumps and bumps before they stretch out.  I wore the pants.  I let out the side seams to get rid of the bumps.  They were perfect.  I wore them and by the time I went to bed they were too big.  We're not talking a whole day here.  I finished them at 5 pm and put them on.  Again, if they were a soft, drapey pair of pants they would still look good, but not in their stiffer, cottony drape. Sure I could only make pants out of drapey material, but I  need sturdy pants for work.  I guess I'll take them in and just let them be tight until they stretch out.  See what I mean about being obsessed?

Moving on:

I'll be sewing at least 4 tops to go with my new pants.  That will be my transitional wardrobe.  The new Aphrodite top from Hot Patterns and Burda's double top are in the mix.  As well as a cardigan and tank top from my tnt t shirt.  Another top, yet to be determined will also be in there. 
Here are the fabrics that are up for consideration.

 This is an open novelty knit, from Emmaonessock,  for the outer layer of the Burda top and the plain white cotton knit is for the inner.  I am going to reverse the necklines so that the openwork shows at the neck, and like several people I am not going to sew them together at the bottom.  Not a good look for wide hips.

This combination if for the tank and cardigan. The right piece is a cotton sweater knit from Emmaonesock for the cardigan and the gray is a piece of double knit also from EOS which was in a double knit bundle.







The right hand piece is a light weight rayon knit from Metro bought on  PR day,  and it will be for a maybe wearable muslin for the Aphrodite top.  The left rayon knit is from Emmaonesock and is up for contention for the fourth top.
 The bottom two are also from Emmaonesock and they are in contention for tops too.  Both  are in my favorite print, animal.