Pants, it's time

A few days ago when I was engaged  in my trying-everything-I-own on mania I was struck, for the 500th time, by how great it would be to have a wonderful, reliable, well-fitting pants pattern.

Not that I haven't tried.

I have made many pants in my time, some were OK but none were great. In my sewing life my inability to perfect a pants pattern has been one of the great pieces of unfinished business in my life.

Time to finish those pieces of unfinished business.

So this is what I have decided to do, as of October 1st, post wedding:

To systematically work my way through different approaches to pant pattern fitting. One method at a time, using this blog as a way to record my honest progress or lack of progress. As an ordinary middle-aged woman with an ordinary middle-aged body and some sewing skills.

Right now the methods I will use will be:

1. Pivot and slide. This is interesting as it argues for patterns purchased two sizes smaller. I have the original Sew Fit Manual (the one with the very, very beautiful young Nancy Zeiman in it) to work from.

2. Copying an existing pair. I am going to use the duct tape method described in the last issue of Threads. I have a decent but worn pair of pants and lots of duct tape. Also this method is crazy enough that I figure it might work. We will see.

3. Joyce Murphy's approach, as described in the current and previous editions of Threads. There are an awful lot of steps to Joyce's method but her after pictures are impressive.

4. Wild Ginger. I have version 3 and will upgrade to version 4 for this project. I have made a number of pants with this software but they have all suffered from front crotch baggyness. Karen at WG has been very helpful and in our last email exchange said that it looked like my crotch was about 3-4 inches lower than it should be. Charming. Obviously lots of room (literally) for improvement there.

I figure it will take me until the beginning of October to get this all organized. In the meantime if anyone has another pants fitting method they would like to test I would love to hear from them. I am committed to doing this and finding out as much as I can about pant fitting.

And tracking down my own wonderful pants pattern. Any one else want to jump in?