Pants, Vogue 2925

Here are my alterations to the pants from V2925.

I have just managed to post my first attempt at a storyboard, which has been cancelled by the failure of the stretch woven pants from V8305 to remain even semi fitted after 3 hours wear. Today I did not work on rescuing the V8035 pants with refitting and stay tape, because they were in the wash. This was just as well, because I was not at all inspired to attempt this sure- to- be- difficult project. Instead, I revisited the woven pants from V2925. That's right, a different sure- to-be - difficult project, these being the pants I sewed the wrong way multiple times last night, thus eventually ensuring that they would not fit by sewing drastically inside the seam allowance in several places. Everything looks better in the morning. This morning I could not believe I'd experienced any difficulty in sewing these pants. There could not be an easier pair of trousers to construct (elastic waistbands are not found on trousers, just pants). It did take me until 10am to work up the fortitude to unpick the sewn and overlocked seams. The fabric is a very loose weave linen/viscose/silk that looks a bit like soft, finer hessian bag and frays incredibly, so the unpicking was not entirely stress free, and I ended up losing some precious seam allowance. However, the pants fit. In fact the pants fit pretty well, even though they are more snug than originally planned. I have started a review of the pants on patternreview.com, but have not pressed the pants or taken any pictures, so it is still in draft mode.I worked very hard on the fit of these pants. I made 2 toiles. My final alterations were :
1. Redraw side seam for size 12 waist, size 16 hip
2. Add another dart at the back and widen dart at the front to fit from hip to waist.
3. Lower waistline by 2.5cm, front and back.
4. Slash at back centre seam to add about 5 cm to this seam without altering side seam.
5. Redraw crotch curve at back to deepen, as shown in Morzel's review of this pattern.
6. Add 1.5cm to inner front leg seam at crotch.
7. Add 2 cm to inner back leg seam at crotch.
8. Taper outside leg seam ( The straight leg would have been fine for wearing fitted or tucked in tops, but I want to wear these pants with a semi fitted blouse outside the waistband, and the quite wide leg made me look big(ger) all over)
9. Shorten legs a little. (I have short legs, and these pants are to wear to work with flats.
10. I also used an invisible zip at the back, rather than a regular zip.
I have taken some pictures to show these changes, but they are still on the camera.
After this hard work on the pants, I had great fun making knit shirts. I had a few metres of chocolate cotton lycra knit that I bought on ebay from Fabric Warehouse Sydney. I played with this with great success. I made the camisole/almost t shirt from V2925. It went together in about 30 minutes including cutting out and drawing the pattern on to interfacing. It looks great and took hardly any fabric, definitely not the 80cm it calls for on the back of the pattern. I made the size 12, which should have been a good fit from the high bust measurement and ease, but was actually a bit big. I have redrawn it to size 10 to try tomorrow. I will use this t for my SWAP, even though I am unlikely to wear it by itself for work. It will look good under the jacket if I can achieve one. I bought small amounts of gorgeous camel brown and a deep red knit from Kerryn's fabric World last week for this item. They were very pricey, but have washed really well and are lovely colours.
After this I escaped from the SWAP for a while. Yesterday I went to my local fabric shop to buy an invisible zip, and check out woven fabric for pants now that I have scrapped the camel and the chocolate stretch woven pants. There was nothing unless I want Navy Blue drill (school uniform fabric). There were a few possibilities for shirts, but shirt fabric is a fruitful area of my stash and does not need attention. To cut a long story short there is a 50% off sale on Simplicity. I could not resist and bought Simplicity 3800 in order to try a twist top. This was fun and easy. Again, the 12 was too big, but I can wear it with a camisole underneath if it ever cools down enough. I will make this again tomorrow in a 10 if there is sufficient chocolate knit left. This is my only knit fabric other than some terrible, cheap looking white and blue interlock that my mother gave me because her quilt group couldn't use it. I must learn to throw out these fabrics as soon as she finishes her visit. Once it is in my cupboard I seem to be incapable putting fabric in the bin. At least I am using lots of rubbish fabric for all these toiles.