A Wolf in Denim

Yep, I made a third pair of trousers. Three pairs in one month, even. (Blame The Monthly Stitch – it challenged me to make trousers, so I figured, may as well jump in with both feet. Especially since I usually avoid making these things.)

This time – meet the Peter and the Wolf trousers from Papercut!

Now, these are so very, very far from my usual style. (After all, they don’t resemble a 1940’s or 1950’s dress in any way, now do they?) I’ve never been one for skinny pants – tried a pair on once, looked horrible on me, avoided them ever since. But, well, that yoke detail – even though I was pretty sure the finished garment wouldn’t be my style, I had to try making them just to try making that yoke.

(Do others fall prey to this as well? The strong desire to make something just for the sake of trying to make it, rather than because you want to wear it in the end?) (Or is it just me? <- sad, lonely voice from the corner)

Anyway, here’s what the finished garment looks like!

Since they’re quite a tight-fitting pair of trousers, and the pattern calls for a woven with some stretch, I went for a stretch denim, and used the reverse side for the contrast yokes.

I used the reverse for contrast on the pocket facings as well, but in hindsight should have probably just stuck with contrast yokes. Next time….

The only alteration I made to the pattern when cutting out was the length – I'd heard from Sandra from when she made her fabulous black-and-red pair that they end up quite cropped. And I'm not really one for cropped trousers (heck, the vast majority of RTW trousers are cropped on me when they aren't meant to be, so I've had a pre-sewing lifetime of unintentionally cropped trousers to try and recover from!). So even though the scalloped hem is utterly gorgeous, I sadly removed it by extending the length instead.

Which I didn’t do enough, it turns out and had to add a cuff at the bottom with the little scraps that were left from my cutting out, to get a bit of extra length. (Whoops!)

The pattern went together really nicely, as all Papercut ones I’ve ever made have done. Nice, clear instructions, good drafting, and overall an enjoyable sew.

I did a bit more topstitching than what was called for, as the denim I used has a fair bit of stretch and I was worried about the seams bursting. So the side seams got topstitched as well, as did the full crotch seam (front and back). (And I can reasonably safely say they’re nice and strong, since I wore these around the house all day on Saturday to test them out! 😉 )

For fun, I used some pink quilting cotton with cupcakes on it for the pocket lining, that I got from my secret santa in the 2013 Sewists Secret Santa Swap. (Thanks, secret santa!) Coz, you know – cupcakes. (Need I say more?)

To my shame, the front and back yokes don’t line up all that well on one side. Not sure how I missed this – guess that’s what happens when you sew with a head cold. Grrr. (And then I compound my feeling of duh-ness around this by showing you all how well they don’t match up….)

These are meant to be a mid-rise style, but the seam where the waistband hits the trousers hits exactly on my hip bones. A bit lower than I was expecting, and I had to add a bit of extra length (like, 7cm extra!) to the waistband to get it to do up when going directly across my hip bones. (Eek!) Next time, I’ll add a bit of length to the front and back pieces, to get these sitting an inch or two higher. (Because of where they hit, the waistband doesn’t sit as smoothly as it should either. But hey, I’ll always be wearing a tshirt or the like over these, so that won’t really matter.) Admittedly, I’m quite tall (177cm), so these are probably going to sit a bit higher on other people. (Have you made them? Do they sit higher?? I’m curious to know!)

So yes, the Peter and the Wolf trousers. So not my usual style. And I must admit, I’m not 100% certain on this pair on me. Do they fit ok? (I don’t ever wear trousers this tight, so I’m finding it hard to tell if there are fitting issues in the front section, or if it’s just that the style is so foreign to me!) Do they look any good? (Again, so far from my style I can’t tell!) Please people – give me your honest opinions!!!

Whether they look any good on me or not, though, I do recommend this pattern. It comes together well, has interesting details, and great instructions. (And I’m contemplating how to convert it into a skirt variation next time I make it, so I can still get that yoke detailing but without the doubt of skinny pants wearing going on.)

Oh, and check out my shoes! I love these – still breaking them in, must get to work on that coz they’re far too pretty to sit languishing in my wardrobe. They’re the ‘Apple Dimple’ style from Minx. Totally my favourite shoe brand.

Thanks to my lovely sister for taking the photos! She did such a good job I had a hard time choosing which ones to use, hopefully it hasn’t given you all photo overload as a result. 😉 (Poll time – lots of photos, or less photos? Which is best for you?)

Cat’s Meow Thurlows

Here’s something that doesn’t tend to appear on this blog – trousers! For me!!

I’m being pushed out of my usual style, thanks to February’s challenge over at The Monthly Stitch was Smarty Pants.

Since I’ve seen so many great versions around the interwebs, I thought I’d try the Thurlow trousers by Sewaholic.

I must admit that I nearly gave up right at the start though – the tissue paper was horribly thin, and there were So Many Pieces to trace and cut!!! It took ages!!! (Seriously. About three times as long as it usually takes me to trace a pattern. Erp.) I’m not entirely sure (will need to check the pattern again, but the idea of unfolding and then refolding that thin tissue paper doesn’t fill me with joy), but I think there was a bit of unnecessary extra work tracing and cutting as well. I’m pretty sure the pattern said to cut out two fly extensions, two fly facings, and two belt loops. But you only need one of each. Also, there are separate pieces for the right and left front legs, which seems a bit unnecessary, since the only difference between the two is a 1cm additional allowance down the fly seam on one side – easy enough to cut them both out together, then have a line marking where to trim down one side, and far less work that having to trace and cut two individual pieces.

But I persevered, and I’m glad I did, as I am rather fond of my new trews. 🙂

Since Sewaholic is designed for a pear-shaped figure, and I’m more of an hourglass (with a very small bust, which is kinda the opposite to an hourglass, but it’s the closest figure match I seem to get measurement-wise), I wasn’t sure how well these would fit me. I had to do a bit of grading while tracing, grading the hips down a size from the waist. With so many pieces, I was a little worried that I’d make a mistake when grading, but it all went smoothly and there were no fitting issues around the hips at all. Yay!

One interesting feature of the Thurlows is the way the waistband is constructed. There’s a centre back seam on it, and there’s also a ‘back extension’ on the trousers themselves, giving you lots of extra fabric to play with if you need to make adjustments. And let’s face it, almost all of us are likely to need to adjust the centre back of trousers to get them to fit us properly, right? While I’m not a huge fan of a centre back seam on a waistband, the way Sewaholic has done is it very clever – it means you’ve got the perfect opportunity to fit them exactly to you at the back, and adjust the waistband at the same time. (And yes, I adjusted mine – took them in by an extra 1cm along the centre back seam (i.e. a total of 2cm across).)

Speaking of the waistband, one bit of the instructions that confused me was sewing the pointed bit of the waistband together. They get you to sew the two sides together at the pointed end, all the way down to the long edge. But I found that when I went to attach the waistband to the trousers, I had to unpick the last 1.5cm of that seam so I could fold the edge of the waistband under properly. Next time, I’ll just stop stitching 1.5cm (5/8″) before I reach the long edge, save myself a bit of unpicking effort.

My original plan was to make these in a blue denim – I haven’t had any jeans that fit me for quite a while now, and every so often I feel the lack of them in my wardrobe. But although I hunted high and low, I couldn’t find the blue denim I thought I had in my stash anywhere. I did, however, find a heavy black denim, so decided to go with that instead. 😉

And then I figured I may as well follow the black-with-leopard theme that I had going on a couple of makes ago, and use leopard-print quilting cotton for the lining sections – inner waistband, fly front, and front and back pocket bags.

(Next time though, I’ll use a fabric that’s the same colour as the shell fabric for the fly facing – it’s the only part that risks accidentely peeking out at the world while wearing the trousers and would be pretty easy to spot if you used a high-contrast colour for it.)

Since the denim is so heavy, I omitted the interfacing from everywhere except for the fly facing as some of those seams were going to be plenty bulky enough for my sewing machine to deal with already. (The fly facing was cut out of the leopard print, so it needed interfacing.)

One area where the pattern didn’t fit me so well was the back of my upper thighs. I’m not sure how much of this was to do with my fabric choice – after all, denim can hang quite differently to lighter-weight trouser fabric. Or it could have been because the pattern is designed for a pear shape, which I am not, so that part of the fit may have been doomed from the start. No idea. (Those who have made these and aren’t pear shapes, how did you find the fit just under the bum? I’m curious to hear!)

Anyway, whatever the cause, I ended up with a fair bit of extra fabric pooling just under th’ bum. (Random things to utter online. Whatever.)

With the help of my lovely sister (thanks, Jen!) we solved the problem. Can you spot the difference below? One leg is basted with the alterations, the other is left untouched. (Plus a bonus toddler photo bomb.)

Here’s another pic to show the difference. (Please ‘scuse the basting thread peaking out of the centre back seam there. Oops.)

To get rid of that pooling fabric, I ended up taking them in by 1.6cm at the outer thigh, and 1.1cm at the inner thigh. So a total change in each thigh circumference of 5.4cm.

I’d probably have been better off doing a fish-eye dart to get rid of the excess, but since they were already made up I just went with taking them in at the side seams instead. And hey, it seemed to work fine. 🙂

One very happy surprise – even though I did my usual lengthening of the legs by around 5cm when cutting out, it was totally unnecessary. These trousers are loooong!! (I approve!!)

Once I got that thigh fitting issue sorted, these trousers fit well. I likes them! I’ve already worn them a few times, and they’ll be getting plenty more wear in the future. (And possibly another pair of Thurlows to keep them company…. Hmmm….)

Since we could, the lovely Mel ad I did another twinsies creation! (You can read all about her pair of Thurlows over here.)

We ducked out one lunchtime to catch up with some of our lovely Wellington-based sewing blogging friends, and got some pics at Frank Kitts park in the CBD. (Thanks to Sandra for playing photographer!)

Gotta show the contrast details, right?

We love our new Thurlows.

Twinsie photos 4 eva, yo!