Sewing intensive in Tennessee- lightbulb moment on pants fitting

I am back in Knoxville visiting my husband who is still working on a project here. I am having an excellent time but I realize for a normal person this is one nutty way to spend spring break.

I go for long walks and can't get over that the place is not covered in ice and snow.We eat out and just enjoy the people. Tomorrow we are going to Alabama and I am pretty happy about that because I have never been there.

But most of the time I am in my hotel room sewing.

My husband, displaying one of the reasons I married him, borrowed a nice machine from the girlfriend of one of the guys on site and it was set up for me when I arrived. And we know I have 13 boxes of fabric here so I am pretty much in my idea of an ideal situation:

No phones.
No cooking.
No errands.
No job.
No housework.
Nobody who needs me to do anything at all.

Just sewing.

I call this a vacation.

I brought my CD with Wild Ginger's Pattern Master Boutique software with me. I have used it a bit in the past but never really had complete success, particularly with the pants. You get out what you put in I suppose. So I decided, since there was no way I was going to get time to do this at home in my busy life, to just see what I could do for a pants pattern.

I have been wanting a nice simple slim legged pants with a waistband like I see in the collections and do not see in the pattern books. I figured they would go with my white shirts and whatever else I decide to make.

So I started my research and looked a pretty much every pants shot I could find in the blogs and Patternreview.

I was absolutely amazed to see that most people, whatever their shape, had the same problems:

1. Too tight across the butt but with baggy folds under the butt
2. A sort of pouchy thing going on under the stomach, like a handful of extra fabric, and some wrinkles at the top of the legs at the front.

I even saw in some Threads articles with their own patterns this extra fabric at the front crotch. I know those model girls wouldn't wear pants like that if they weren't getting paid for it.

I mean raise your hand if you haven't made 497 pairs of pants with this exact same problem.

So before I did anything else and started 498 I sat down in this hotel room and thought about it.

That's when it occurred to me that we forget about legs, as in we walk around in pants, we don't just stand in front of the digital camera for a picture. And then I thought about arms, which also move (mine have been heaving boxes of fabric around the hotel room) and it occurred to me that pants and a crotch are just a sort of another version of 3D drafting just like sleeves and armholes are.

So what do I know about armholes?

1. A higher tailored set-in sleeve armhole is more comfortable and gives more movement than a looser dropped armhole.
2. A closer armhole, in addition to giving more mobility, has less excess fabric and fewer wrinkles, than a dropped armhole.

When I thought about this some more I realized what pants do most people wear most often? Jeans. Now I know whatever your throw-on default garment is, it is that because it is comfortable. So jeans are comfortable and generally don't have a lot of that extra fabric at the front thing happening. They also have a crotch that is cut closer to the body than other pants.

In PMB there are four crotch styles from loose to close to the body - culottes, trousers, slacks and jeans. Because I was fooling around making slim pants and a looser pattern for linen wide legged pants I was using the slacks and trouser crotches.

I changed both patterns to the jeans crotch, even though neither pair were jeans, and presto the extra fabric at the front disappeared and the pants ( I made 6 muslins during this process) became a lot more comfortable.

I also rethought my crotch length measurement. In all my versions I was measuring my crotch length as specified but ending up with something too long. I then realized that when you add a waistband you want the top of that to be at your waist, and if you add a waistband onto pants that stop at your waist, well you are going to settle them in and give yourself a droopy crotch. So I subtracted my 1" waistband, total of 2" from my crotch measurements and that did the trick.

In addition I learned a few things about PMB that might be useful to other users of this program, understanding this works for my body which is essentially tall, with a butt that sticks out a lot, no real hip shape, as in straight up and down, and the kind of belly that comes with three babies, a section, and leaving the category of spring chicken.

1. I wanted less fabric in the thigh like the RTW slim pants I saw. You get this in PMB by reducing the knee width setting, this pulls in the thigh. I brought mine down to 0.

2. My front darts looked poofy at the bottom. I tried every configuration of dart placement and length with no improvement. Then I re-read the Help notes in the program and it said to release the darts at the fullest part. Since my abdomen is sort of a unit from waist to crotch there is no curve and no high point. I don't need dart shaping where there is no shape. So I set the program for three darts (this made them tiny and also moved the front crotch vertical giving me the fabric where I needed it) erased the dart lines in Pattern Editor and just sewed up my muslin without any front darts. Nice and smooth.

3. Being hip shapless I have always been annoyed by that jodphur thing which I could not get rid of in the PMB pattern. I then went back to the fine print in Help and realized that how the program works is to give you the widest fabric at the front where you have identified your hip depth (I located this not by anything happening at my hip but by my widest-measurement which really is created by the big rear end not anything happening hipwise). So to get rid of this curve I moved my hip depth measurement in Settings up, from 8" to 4.25". If you look at the slim pants pattern I have put here you can see that little curve is close to the top, giving me a little extra so the pants don't pull across my belly. I also lowered the side seams .75" and the front 1". All my RTW pants dip down at CF. You will notice that there is almost no shape to my front crotch, I took out -.02 of the crotch shape (first arrow).

4. The back crotch after all of this was easy since I knew what I would do on paper. I opted for round back crotch, wild cut (meaning extra at CB waist) increased the back crotch extension .25,  changed the back crotch break to -2.5 and moved in the crotch shape 1.8 (second arrow) ( this is the old lower and scoop out combo).

5. Finally I added 2" to length and choose a contoured waistband because they are more comfortable.

What I have ended up with are pants that I think fit pretty near as perfect as you get on an imperfect body, all this info saved into defaults and a program I can now use to draft different pant styles.

It took isolation in a hotel room to get here, and I hope some of this information might be useful to you too.

Pictures of some finished pants are forthcoming when DH comes back.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day to you all. And I would like to share my own Valentine's Day thought with you.


One of the best things about being a grown-up is that you see and appreciate love in more places. I am so glad to have left behind the stage of life where it had to be the guy or nothing. It's so good to be in a place where good love is as big as romantic love. It is a good thing to let your definition of true love grow.


I spent today with Miss Scarlett who was down with a cold and quite happy to toddle around my house with my "jewels" on (my old out of date necklaces) sit with me and look at books and give me lots of snotty nose kisses. I was happy to make the dogs happy with a long off leash walk in the snow at the golf course, and for the handmade heart ornament my daughter made last night before she went to bed  for her shift this morning at 7:00 a.m. at the hospital.


And I talked to my 83 year old mother today too who read the Valentine's Day card she got from the group she does reading tutoring at the local elementary school with "You rock. You no everything."


I also got a nice email from a friend I made when I was 17. She lost her husband before he was 30 and gone on to be the aunt who never misses the game. People who know how to love aren't held back from much.


So I hope some of this touched your life today. And Happy Valentine's Day from me.

The latest from the completely lost it department

I didn't get any, not any, sewing done this weekend. I did manage to go down into my sewing room and give it a few wish-I-was-here looks, but that was it.


On Friday I am flying down to DC to spend a weekend with my son and on Sunday afternoon going to Knoxville for the week to visit with DH who is still there.


It's my spring break from school and for me to get out of here is an operation not unlike the invasion of Normandy, and that's not an operation that regretfully involves much leisurely sewing.


I now have both household dogs, Mr. Rascal and my son-away-at-school's dog Birdie, on homemade, vet approved food. It started out as a health thing for Mr. R's diet (working great, latest bloodwork was perfect) but I couldn't stand the look in Birdie's eyes when the R man got the great food, and actually since Birdie is the gentleman of the pair, well it was only fair ...


So I have spent pretty much the parts of the weekend I was not marking student papers making and freezing 50 dog meals. I know I never got it together to be this organized or considerate of my children when they were all at home, but then again I never had to pay vet bills for them.

I am also wondering what I am going to be doing when I am in Tennessee. DH and I will be together in DC and the weekend at the end of the visit but he will be working during the week. Since I am flying I won't be taking my machine, but in our last conversation he told me that there are now 13 boxes of fabric I have ordered in his hotel room and that has cheered me right up during my no sew weekend. I have no recollection of what I ordered over the last couple of months, apart from the fact I got some real deals and I needed it.


My plan is to take all my cutting stuff and cut patterns out while I am there, and do some knitting. No interruptions. Won't that be great?


I will have a car so I might go off and see a few sites too, like any fabric stores I can find. Anyone have any suggestions?

My apologies to Bren

A while ago Bren from Brensan Studios emailed me and asked I add her to the white shirt project list. Unfortunately her email was put in my Junk Mail where it has been waiting far too long with a bunch of other useful and maybe not so useful stuff.


Bren has done some white shirt sewing and you can read more about that here.


Sorry Bren. http://www.brensan.com/blog/?p=18

This would say it all

I have found the perfect teacher:

 At last someone clear and at my level.

Tuning up

I had my annual Dr. visit today, all was cool, despite the fact that my doctor who is otherwise sensible, thinks that people should stay the same weight they were in high school.


He doesn't quite seem to understand that I was way too underweight in high school. A problem I have fixed since then.


It got me thinking on the drive home that I really hate going to the doctor, I mean really hate it. I would rather rip out a welt pocket than do this.


So it seems to me the point of improving your lifestyle is to reduce the times you have to go see those guys.


Which, since my doctor has a picture of himself running across the finish line in a race on his wall, got me to thinking about fitness.


There is a lot to think about. 


For instance there have to be four kinds of fitness. How fit you could be. How fit you should be. How fit you want to be. How fit you have to be to get by best you can.


The last one is all I am concerned with. All I want is to stay in the same multi-sized pattern range but have fewer lower body alterations.


Gyms don't do it for me. By the time I get home from work I am not going out again, except in we-need-milk emergencies where you at least can look forward to bringing home new lipstick too.


I have a treadmill that yes I do use, particularly since I have learned to knit and walk at the same time (go for slower speed but higher incline, it works) so I figured that maybe a workout  DVD might suit me. 


Last time I went to Cosco I threw a Pilates DVD in the cart since the core is what's shot but that didn't work out that well. Those people are crazy. Let's just leave it at that. I regretted the $14.99 I could have spent on lipstick.


So on my way home from Mr-winner-of-the-race I stopped by the local library. I adore libraries and have complete faith in them to deliver for me.


In this case though I was completely frustrated by the titles they had, which to my mind just showed a complete disconnect to the kind of people who would be reduced to borrowing exercise DVD's from the public library.


I mean do you have any idea how hard it is to find something that doesn't have the words "Burn" "Iron" "Bootcamp" "Blast, fast and endurance" on it? Where were the titles I was looking for? You know ones like:


Pilates for people who don't yet have the stomach muscles to do Pilates


Core work for woman who had really big babies a really long time ago


After work yoga for people who are stressed out working for crazy people


Exercise with good music for people who would rather be doing absolutely anything else


In the end I had to settle for a beginners pilates dvd that at least you get to sit down for on one of those exercise balls that someone keeps putting in my sewing room no matter how many times I put it out - in a routine much like Fred Flintstone putting out the pet dino.


Plus one where you exercise doing Bollywood dancing.


Listen I love Bollywood. So much. I watch through so many bad movies just so I can get to the part at the end where the whole family comes out and dances. I am a big time wedding dancer, the kind who hits the floor with the eight year old in a sweaty bow tie doing the Snake, so this makes perfect sense to me.


I will let you know how it turns out.


BTW WW online version is great - you just put in what you ate and it gives you the points, at which point you say "No kidding!" and resolve to do better tomorrow. I have lost about 1/10 of what I put on since high school since I have been on it.




I will leave you with my exercise aspirations:

Sewing up the raveled hem

I had a fairly frazzled weekend. I was busy, I was out, I talked to people. I felt scattered, worried, and just wish my husband's tour of duty working away was over. I have too much to do and too much on my mind right now.


And if you are alive and particularly if you have been alive a bit, not all news is good news, some people you care about are going through tough times. One of the best and most alive men I know, one of my oldest friends and the husband of one of my best friends, has started a long struggle with a tough degenerative illness. Their faith isn't the same as mine, and I don't know where you stand on such things, but I have to tell you, when the chips are down it makes a difference.


So because of a lot of things, not anything I can control or fix, the weekend wore me down.


It wasn't until 8:00 tonight, Sunday night, that I made it down to my sewing room.


At first I just sat there and looked at my stuff.


Then I got out the boxes and boxes of 60's, 70's and 80's patterns my neighbour had rescued for me from a church sale and I looked through them. I am taking a bunch to the local sewing guild Tuesday night but keeping all the ones that have meaning for me.


There are patterns in those boxes that I absolutely remember making, or I remember my sister making. It is as if all my very own patterns from decades ago in my life have come back to me. Looking through them I lost the years too, and it was as if I were in my dad's house in the basement sewing something new to wear to school, waiting for my mother to call me for dinner - my life just that complicated.


The amazing thing is  with all the things that have come with an adult life, the challenges and adjustments that come with serious territory, my sewing life and how I feel about it is exactly the same - that part of me is completely intact. Me, in the original, is there -with none of the parts broken off or worn off or given up on or taken away.


I am still there, as is, as always.


One of my sisters used to do some home care for a lady named Doreen. I went with her once on one of the visits. Doreen was in her 90s then and had lost a considerable number of her marbles, but when she heard I sewed she took me into her bedroom where her machine was set up and she was working on a blouse. The blouse was turning out very well, and this woman who I think had the elements disabled on her stove for that burning pot thing I think we are all going to do one day, had even taught herself how to use a serger, which she said wasn't all that hard to thread once you got the hang of it.


True, she wasn't remembering every body by the right name, even people she might have gone into labour for, but I sure understood why Doreen kept that little table in the corner of her bedroom set up to go.


That's the spot where she knew she still was.


So tonight after I looked through those patterns and felt myself settle down inside, I picked up the navy wool skirt I had started to make to go with some of these white blouses and I finished it, and took a lot of time pressing it too.


It turned out absolutely beautifully and while I sewed I felt like all my own scattered parts flew in from the corners of that room and sort of reassembled inside of me. So by the time I was done I was saying to myself that yes I knew what to do, it would be OK, these things can happen to anyone, we would all get through it.


And then I turned off the light and came upstairs.