Pants and ease

I once knew a woman, still do in fact, who has been working on a pants muslin for 30 years.

This is a fairly long time to be frustrated by that same pouch at the front crotch and the drag lines along the inner thighs.

She has far more stamina than I have.

My own on and off again pant fitting issues in the past have taught me two things:

1. Different designers/companies have different pants drafts, particularly in the all important and hard to fit crotch area. May I suggest that rather than breaking your head on 54 tweaky adjustments you explore the possibility that somewhere out there is a pants block that is shaped like you?

For me it is Stylearc. 

I pretty much can make any Stylearc pants pattern as is, maybe these days with a waist addition, but adding for the waist in my view is sort of a standard practice thing not really in the category of pattern alteration if you can follow that logic, and I am not sure if even I can.

Some folks fit Burda patterns, some Vogue, and some another Indie.

It might be worth exploring to find out if your match is out there.

2. Ease is different depending on who you are and where you have what you have. I think this is a fact that is often overlooked, particularly minimum wearing ease in closer fit garments like pants.

This is what I mean.

Remember the cut-her-out-flat and make her round argument? Well this is true, but you need to add in one more thing that makes garment sewing so different from other design activities.

The subject moves and as she moves the shapes change.

Straight up this means that thin, little fat people don't need as much wearing ease as the rest of us.

How you assess what you personally need to have for wearing ease in pants or straight skirts involves this:

• Take your hip measurement (or your waist, belly whatever) standing up.
• Holding the tape measurement around the same place sit down and as you do it let the measuring tape expand as it wants to.

Here is my example:

My hips are 40"

When I sit down they are 43"

So a standard straight skirt or pants with 1 - 1.5 inches of wearing ease is going to feel way too tight, or even split when I sit.

So when I assess a pattern I want to make 43" my absolute minimum and am more happy with say 44" ease.

Does this add up to you?

Works for me and I would be interested in your thoughts.