Trousers, Slacks, Pants!

Whatever you call them . . .

I got to model my new pants for school last week. I also wore them all day, but no one noticed or said anything, so I didn't change back into the skirt I wore to school! I didn't wear them to school because I had to do the hems on the morning commute. See, I'm a school bus chaperone, and I ride the bus with the kids. It gets pretty cold in the winter, but I make good use of the time and do handstitching, reading, knitting, percolating, etc. I've also figured out how to do hand beading on the bus, too. *That* is another story, for another time.

Here I am in the first pair of wearable pants. I said wearable for a reason. The first pair was an unwearable muslin (is that right, Lisa?) , hence experiment #2, the grey pants. Seeing someone's saddlebags, especially my own, isn't pleasing! I like the grey - at least it's in this season and the fabric was $1.00 at my local Wally World. I wasn't going to pay big bucks for fabric for another experiment. I am certain that it's polyester with a captial P-O-L-Y-S-T-E-R, but it looks ok, and I'll keep them. If the grey trend goes away, then I've lost less than $5.00 for the fabric and zipper.

I ended up morphing these two patterns.

The Vogue has narrower legs, but the McCall's fits me through the thigh but the leg is really, really wide. I think if I would have had the Vogue in both the smallest and the next size range, I could have cobbled something together to fit. The problem is, in patterns, I'm a 6 or 8 in the waist, but around a 12 in the hip. I've always loved the straight clean style, but it doesn't work for an hourglass - RTW is a joke - if it fits the thigh, I could fit two of me in the waist, if the waist fits, there's no way short of liposuction I'm getting my thighs into the pants. This is the best compromise - the narrower leg of the Vogue with the looser thigh of the McCall's. I put in the zip as usual, and sewed the inner leg seams. I then split the back waistband into two parts at the center back seam, stitched the 4 waistband parts to the pants parts and basted the crotch seam and side seams. A bit of tweaking later, and I had pants that fit fairly well. For me, this is the best way to deal with a pants muslin, as my problem areas are the thighs and back waist area.

Bottom line, my principal liked them, the students (some of the world's toughest and most honest critics) liked them, and I like them. Next: the Marfy pants, when I get the pattern. I splurged on $2.00 a yard fabric for the Marfy test garment!