The pattern sat in its envelope for a long long time before I was even willing to pull it out and read the instructions.. then finally a few weeks ago I pulled it out and actually taped the pattern pieces together. I don't know what I find so intimidating about it.. I know I can sew jeans, I've sewn 3 or so pairs for my son. But as we all know fitting jeans for an 8 year old boy is a lot less involved than fitting jeans for a woman.. mainly a woman who is long and thin waisted with larger thighs and calves.
So today I figured it might as well give a quick and dirty muslin a shot. I had some denim left over from a pair of my son's jeans (it's stretch denim from Joann's) and so I cut out short pants and cut the waistband out of a different denim remnant. The funny thing is that these are only a few inches too short even though I folded like a foot out of the bottom of the pattern pieces to fit them on my remnant..
My measurements are as follows:
Height: 5' 9"
Waist: 29.5"
High Hip (2" below belly button) 34 "
Full Hip 40"
Those measurements put me at a size 10 waist and a size 12 hip and leg... not surprising. Just to give it a shot I cut a straight size 12 and then did a super quick and dirty sew up.
Prior to sewing on the waistband they looked rather promising.
You can see the waist is standing proud of my body a bit
And they are a bit snug across the widest part of my backside but since there's no zipper sewn in yet it seems like a 12 is an ok fit. It's super hard to tell in these dark pictures but I don't like where the yoke seam falls on my booty, I think it would make pocket placement a nightmare. I think if I raise the rise by .75"- 1" it could really help with that.
Now you can see how weird it is with the waistband sewn on. It definitely needs to be curved more or have the magical "wedge taken out of the back" that everyone in the blogosphere keeps talking about but that I don't have any idea how to accomplish.
Again due to the snugness across my booty there are pull marks at the crotch.. these really don't hit me this far below my belly button, I think in trying to keep my shirt out of the way I let them fall down a bit. But these photos definitely show that I need to raise the rise up, probably at least an inch would be good.
I think if I raise the rise up and fix the waist band gap problem they will look pretty good and not make my butt look as square as it does in this picture.. haha.
Anyhow, I am going to consider this muslin process a success as now I have a real idea of how to proceed when my real denim arrives. I ordered this Italian Stretch Denim from Michael Levine with a 20% off Black Friday coupon and so I got enough denim for 2 pairs of jeans for less than $30. So even if I totally screw them up I won't be out a lot of money. And I know it can't be too difficult to get my jeans to fit at least as well as these ones I've been wearing.
Sexy Boyfriend Jeans in a size 8 from Gap Outlet.
You can see here that the waist and back yoke are so big they sag down and create a bubble on the back.
And look at this awful pocket placement. I can do better.
Wish me luck.
