Friday, December 7, 2012

Crazy pants!

I have a feeling that these pants are even love or hate. Well, I LOVE them....even though this pair has some mistakes. One I was able to correct (there is a tutorial later in this post) and one I semi fixed and have corrected on the pattern for the next pair.







































I mentioned in a Facebook status for Sewing Like Mad (you do 'like' this blog on Facebook, right!?) that I am totally unplanned making my own mini series called knocking of all J.Crew's pants. Yes yes it is just a joke BUT my two latest posts has been J.Crew pant knock offs and I thought this was going to be one too.
However while making this blog post I decided to follow the 'trail' on Pinterest where I found this photo of Jenna Lyons (J.Crew's Executive Creative Director) wearing these absolutely stunning pants and it turns out that they are from Celine. Oh well, my mistake for being a bit quick with the conclusion that Jenna only wears J.Crew. But the style totally looks like their Cafe Capri. Anyway knocking off a pair of Celine pants is fine with me. 
My version obviously has quite a different look since they are converted into kids pants in more practical materials like denim and corduroy. and with both wider and longer roll up legs. 
Another difference is the colors. I totally love love love the original colors and mine are made with what I had in my fabric stash (in other words maybe not my very first choices). I did have black fabric but decided that blue denim was more suited for children. What do you think?

So what it is with the mistakes and that tutorial? Let's get into it:
First mistake I could not correct because I did not have enough fabric to cut new front pieces. But when I drafted the front pockets I did not think about that the side of the front piece was not actually the side seam (the side seam is obviously the middle of the orange side panel) so the front pocket is way too far towards the middle and both looks silly and make the whole top front piece bend out as soon as Wilma bends over just a little bit - or sticks her hands in the pocket as you can see on one the photos above. I guess these pants would really works for boys too, ahem!
My semi fix was to close the top of the pocket opening with a stitch. That worked kind of okay(-ish) and she can still get her hand in the pockets.

Second problem did I unfortunately not notices when we took the first set of photos (the ones above). That required more action and movement. So it was only at the playground I noticed that the back waist was not high enough....in other words Wilma was climbing around on the jungle gym with a lovely a$$ crack showing. Argh!
Okay and now to the solution - remember I was out of big pieces of denim AND there was no way I was replacing that back piece with those piped pockets I spend what felt like hours on any way. Soooo I added a back yoke so I could rise the back waist. (Kind of lucky they were made of denim since all jeans have back yokes*. 
In this case I am not using the yoke's normal purpose (see note) but solely to have an excuse to add a (higher) piece of fabric without it looking like I added a piece of fabric.

So I took my original back pattern, traced the top part, added 2 cm (almost 1 inch) to the center back top, faded the new waist line down to the 'side seam' (the seam that meets the orange side panel) as smooth as I could and finally decided where I wanted my yoke seam on the pants (obviously somewhere over the already sewed piped pockets). They also usually go in some sort of v-shape so that is what I did. You can see it all in the photo above......I hope!


You can also see I traced the original too low waist line on the pattern (the dotted line). The reason for that is that I needed that line when I was going to cut off the top of the original back piece to make room for the new yoke.
On this photo above I have attached the yoke pattern to the original back piece BUT first I have folded the lowest part of the yoke pattern up 2 cm (I am sewing with 1 cm seam allowance and to make sure there is also seam allowance on the original back piece to sew on the yoke I have to cut off the back piece 2 cm higher than where the seam between yoke and pants is going to be). Sorry I am not sure how good I am explaining this - please ask me if you have any questions!


Here we are at the same operation but I have just turned the pants around so you can see how the pants are placed on the other side of the paper.


And here we are with the final result. I realize the center back looks very steep but it will work in the end (haha). This photo is taken before the elastic has been put in. 

And when a round behind comes in it will align even more and look totally fine.
By the way if you are wondering what in the world is up with those pockets? Well, that is why there is normally some kind of buttons in pockets like this because when the round behind come in the pockets become 'smiling'. Oh well I think I was just done with these pants at this point....maybe next pair.



             
Here we are with an action shot and no visible body part that no type of action should show, phew!


And I swear I did not ask her to pose like that....that is the position she put herself in in the middle of the soccer game to take a sip of water. Oh dear! I was surprised she even wanted to play. Normally she chooses to be the cheerleader - yes, I do try to explain to her that the game is more fun when there is more than one player on the field.....

Note:
*) A yoke is an alternative way to add shape to the pants - like darts. They both eliminate the difference between waist and hip and help the pants to follow the round behind.