Back to Jeans

The last couple of days, as time permitted, I played with jeans again.  You may recall, I went through trying to perfect a jean pattern some time ago.  Then, I lost some weight, and those "muslins" no longer fit--too big.  That part (the too big part) was a good thing.

I went through the stage, "Why do I need to make jeans?  I can generally find jeans that fit pretty well so why go to all that trouble?  I would go back and forth - don't go to the trouble - then, why not? I've been wanting purple jeans and I haven't found any RTW in purple.  I'd vacillate between I want the challenge to 'see if I can perfect a pattern' and 'I have other things to be working on.' And so it went."

Since I've had pretty good luck with StyleArc pant patterns, I ordered the Sandra Jean pattern with my last Australian order.  It is made for non-stretch fabrics, and it has the more slender leg - not a jegging.  The few jegging RTW jeans I tried on were not.for.me, and I was having trouble finding just a slender leg that wasn't tighter than I preferred.

I cut the size 10 pattern just as it came out of the package.  It fit pretty well.  I had cut the side seams at 3/4", 3/8" bigger than the pattern seam allowance.  I sewed it at 3/8 and ultimately took it in to the full 3/4 (so there had been no need to cut the larger seam allowance.  Better to have it than not, yes?

I could see a bit of extra fabric in the front just under the zipper extension.  There, I pinned out a small dart at that center seam and tapered to nothing at the side seam (a la Peggy Sagers).

There were some wrinkles under the bum - not as bad as with other patterns.  All the other StyleArc pant patterns I've sewn called for fabric with a stretch (either a knit or fabric with lycra).  With those, I had few under the bum wrinkles (or too few to worry about), which I attributed to the fabric stretch factor.  Feeling I had to deal with the under the bum wrinkles I pinched out a slight dart just under the bum as Peggy Sagers demonstrates in her free jeans fitting webcast.  I cut a new "back" only, took the muslin apart and sewed in the new back leg.  Hmm....still extra fabric under the bum.  I sewed in a "fish eye" dart in the upper back leg.  That seemed to take care of that extra fabric, but would it work in real life?

I remembered Debbie Cook showing a 'how to' for a fish eye dart on a pant on her her blog.  I used her method, and cut out one more back.  My muslin fabric was running low, but I still had enough to test this change.

This did make a difference and I think I can go with a real jean with this altered pattern.  The altered front/back pattern pieces:

The muslin with the changes:

I do ask myself if I'm trying to overfit.........I'm not sure.  I plan to make these up, wear them, make sure they are wearable, and see if I feel the need to make any changes.