jimmy jeans part 7

now that i've fine tuned my pelvic area i made a full pants sloper to see the overall look and feel.  these guys are pretty right on.  they're a little bit looser than i would like my jeans to be, but i think they'd make an excellent khaki or similar pants style pattern.

ahh, there we go.  in reality you can barely tell, but this is just slightly more snug--more in tune to what a jean actually fits like.  i actually cross referenced the width of the legs on my old a.p.c. jeans pattern because i like the fit of those.

it's getting so close i can feel it.  from that final sloper i drafted up a very basic pant pattern with just a front, back, yolk, and waistband to see where all those elements fall on my body.  i made it with a weight of canvas that is almost identical to the denim i purchased.

the fit looks good throughout, although they're riding a little higher than i thought.

to compensate for the high rise i just decreased the height by 3/4" on the front and back.

these feel pretty perfect.  i can't believe how great the ass looks in these!  ethan says they look like 70's leisure wear pants.  maybe i should make a suit!

now i get down to the nitty gritty of drafting the final jeans pattern.

just to make sure i'm getting the seam allowances right with the flat felled seams i did a test run.  i marked the actual seam lines with sharpie, folded, and sewed.  theoretically the sharpie lines should be exactly in the middle of the 2 stitch lines.  5/8" seam allowance works great!

so, this is the to-scale full mock up of the jeans.  of course the only thing i see is those wrinkle lines coming out of my ass.  this picture is the best image i could get (the least amount of wrinkles).  i couldn't figure out how the sloper could fit so perfect and then the butt seam freaks out on me again.  at this point i had a slight melt down.

i spent the next 4 hours taking these apart, re-sewing them together, trying on a pair unworn a.p.c. jeans, quickly drafting up a new pattern with a different slope to the back crotch seam.  the most frustrating thing is that the jeans on the left are with a flat felled seam (like on regular jeans) and the jeans on the right are the same pair but with the flat felled seam removed and the seam line stitched together regular style (the seam stitched together along the seam line).  WTF!!!

in the end ethan talked me down from the ledge.  i had accepted defeat when he came home and said the jeans looked great (some times it helps to just show up and see the final product and not know the process.)  but, my mini-freak out actually did help me learn a little bit.  when i went back and tried on the unworn pair of a.p.c. jeans (the ones i made the pattern from) i could feel how different the fit was compared to my new jeans.  somethings i liked (the rise and amount of ease in the hip area) somethings i hated (um, saggy butt?) but i understood now how those things were effected by my pattern and how that related to my body.  in the end i added the 3/4" back into the rise (really? how many times am i going to mess with the rise?) and added just a touch of ease into the hip area.

next step:  the jeans!!