Gin and Tonic: Vogue 2948 - The MC Hammer Pants

Man, I knew these pants were bad, but seeing them in pictures really brings it home. These pants are a pretty big 'Fail'. (Although I will totally still wear them to work, because they are comfortable, and I'm not proud.)

Anyhoo.

These started out as the pattern that came with the Craftsy class "Pant Fitting Techniques" with Sandra Betzina. I also took "Pant Construction Techniques", but I didn't get another pattern. I was going to give it away, but oh well.

I wanted to like these pants, really I did! I like the fabric just fine. It was labelled 'summer suiting' at Fabricland, and is some sort of polyester blend. But it's pretty breathable and light actually, and was good to work with. So that's something. Especially since it needed a lot of work.

I followed the whole class, and all her fitting steps. I made a muslin and everything. The only thing I didn't do was make a muslin with the waistband, which turned out to have been a strategic mistake.

I made a few tweaks to my muslin, then jumped right in. It went well at first. I tried a lapped zipper for the first time. Which didn't go so well, frankly, since I had no idea how to attach the inside waistband to the zipper. Actually it was horrible, but there's no photographic evidence of that zipper. Convenient, huh? I think I ripped that zipper out 3 times before I was not so much satisfied, as sort of defeated. And that was after the pocket debacle. (If you make this, skip the pockets in the waistband. They are finicky, and ultimately useless, because what are you going to put into pockets that sit at the biggest part of your tummy? Nothing!)

Then there was the whole waistband debacle where I couldn't get the front waistband to fit to save my life. Like, in the video she's showing you how to run an ease line, but I needed to ease in something like 2 inches! It took about 3 trys before I sort of did it. I decided I could live with it and moved on to the back waistband. Which, if you are quicker than I was, was obviously 2" too short. Yeah. I totally sewed the back band onto the front. Good times with the stitch ripper!

The bigger problem was that the pants were....huge. Like, ridiculous. There was no dimension in which these pants fit. The crotch was easily an inch too low, and I could take off probably 2 inches on each side. They were completely unwearable.

So, I ripped the waistband off, again. (I think for the 5th time? Something like that? Perhaps I blacked out somewhere.) I pulled up the pants by about half an inch, planning to sew the band on lower to cinch them up a bit. I took out the zipper (again, sigh), and took the side seams in by an inch on each side. I didn't want to touch the princess seams in the front or back, which might have been a mistake.

Then I cut a new waistband, removing the excess from the side. Now, if you are cleverer than I was, or just a more experienced sewer, you might have spotted the mistake I made. Wait for it.

I decided to change the sewing order, to follow yet another Craftsy class, this one "Mastering Construction: Zippers and Waistbands" with Sara Alm. She demonstrated a tricky maneuver where you sew the inner band front and back to the outer bands separately at the zipper, and then use a burrito technique to sew the zipper to both pieces at once and flip them out. I had...mixed success. It was better than the first zipper, I'll say that for it. I think I need to practice it.

Anyway, as I was trying to sew the front waistband on, it was...too short. As I was swearing, I realized that by cutting down the front, I was increasing the length, because we were moving towards the widest part of the hip. Yeah, that was fun.

So after cutting and interfacing yet another waistband, and doing the zipper trick, I was done. And they are still too big. And the zipper is not great. But whatever. I'm not ripping them apart again.

And the pattern? Ultimately I don't think I like it enough to make it again. I'm not in love with the princess seams, and I realized I don't particularly like side zip pants. (And I think I'd like the other option, the back zip, even less.)

So here is the 'final' pair of pants. Yeah, they are wrinkly from being in my bike pannier. Couldn't really muster up the energy to iron them before taking pictures.