World Wide Pants

I’m on a pants sewing mission. I am trying to stay away from tops until I finish my basic sloper in class, so I went to Joann Fabrics’ semi annual (ie: whenever they feel like it) 50% off Red Tag Fabric sale and stocked up. I spent $40 and wound up with 5×1.5 yards of suiting fabric and 3×1yrds of knits (for the as yet to be designed tops).

Lucky me, I can make nice pants with less than 2 yards of fabric. I decided that I really like making pants, and here’s why:

There are not that many pattern pieces, and there are not that many steps involved.
My basic pants pattern (which I originally made in August but never bothered to photograph/blog about it/Patternreview.com it or otherwise document it) has only 4 main pieces – front, back, patch pocket and waistband. It has a fly front zipper and a tabbed waistband (I love tabbed waist bands), patch pockets on the back. I modified it from a 1970s “super low rise bikini jeans” pattern from Simplicity.

By “modify”, I mean shorten legs considerably, straighten hip area out so that there is no curve, straighten the lower leg to a boot cut, and add back darts to accommodate my not-quite-a-sway-back. The only thing that did not need to be changed was – surprise – the rise. The rise was absolutely perfect – the pattern description states “low slung bikini jeans are designed to sit 4.5″ below the natural waist.” Which means it looks downright respectable (aka “non-butt cleavage-revealing”) on me.

I am not a fan of the patch pockets on the front, so I left those off, but I did include them on the rear. My original pants were made out of leftover white-with-black-pinstripe polyester suiting. They are super comfy and look nice but alas, they are white. Which means they show dirt and the lack of side pockets make them useless for me when I am in the lab.

Why, you ask, can I not wear white pants with no side pockets in the lab?
Two reasons:

Reason # 1:
Because every subject in my study brings in her bike, which I then have to take from her, remove the rear wheel, remove the rear cassette, install her cassette on a Powertap rear wheel, then install the Powertap wheel on her bike, then mount her bike to the computrainer. And I can assure you that most of my subjects do not clean their bikes. Ever.

Reason # 2:
There is the issue of the lactate analyzer. The lactate analyzer needs to be calibrated before each day of testing (and sometimes several times a day if I am testing 4 subjects back to back). The 5mmol standard solution that we use to calibrate is kept in the refrigerater. However, the solution needs to come to room temperature before it can be used for calibration. Which means that I have two choices for setting up the lab in the morning:
1.) get there 2 hours before my first subject to take the stuff out of the fridge.
B.) Stick the bottle in my pants pocket and hope that my 98ºF body warms it up.

I opted for choice B, because my time is valuable, and when I have a 7am subject there is no way in hell I am getting into the lab at 5am. Did I mention that I live an hour from campus? Yeah. So, I need pants with pockets for my research, and white pants won’t work unless people start actually following the instructions I give them about testing which state that bikes must be clean when brought to the lab. (Honestly, I think this is all just karma/pay back for me when I brought my filthy IF cross bike into the lab last year for my test when I was a subject in another grad student’s study. Because the lab only has a 700c Powertap wheel, I had to do my test on the IF, which at the time was the only bike I had with 700c wheels. It was also a bike that had not been cleaned in several years. I now have 0 bikes with 700c wheels, but I do have a 650c Powertap. Which, by the way, is very clean).

Now, back to the pants project. I had perfected the fit of the pattern so I decided that I needed to just bang out 5 pairs of these pants. I sat down yesterday to start sewing when my mind started going “must.have.pockets.”

You see, I covet these pants from J.Crew. But I do not have the height nor the body type to fit into the J.Crew pants.

Hmm..I’ve sewn shorts with side seam slant pockets, but never pants. Unfortunately I lent my shorts pattern to someone else, and I do not have any pockets patterns around, nor do I remember how to sew them.

Lightbulb.

Consult Sewing Book. I have 5 different sewing books, and sure enough the Vogue/Butterick Step by Step Book of Sewing Stuff (I have no idea if that what it is actually called or not, I bought it at the Salvation Army for $0.50 and it is a great resource) showed me how to do all sorts of pockets. I free hand drafted the pattern pieces and then cut the fabric (after already cutting the pants out, which means that I need to trim the slant onto the side hip of the pants front) and got to work.

I am 99% happy with my self drafted pockets on my pants.
My goal was to finish these pants in one day (pants are fast, typically) but then my mind started going again and I decided that I really wanted double welt pockets on the rear. Only, I’ve never done double welts. I have, however, practiced bound button holes and from what I understand double welt pockets are just like ginormous bound button holes- only they have a pocket attached.

Consult book again – alas, book only has single welt pockets, and I know how to do those (on a coat) and I don’t want that. So I decided to do this all by myself, with no consultation from a book or even our friend the internet. There is a very good chance that one of my other sewing books had the technique in it, but I was on a mission to invent my own method of double welt pockets.

I’ll make a tutorial as soon as I construct another pair of pants, but for the most part my experiment worked.
I now have a completely 100% self drafted pants pattern featuring a tab front waist band, fly front zipper, side seam slant pockets and rear welt pockets.

Here’s an unfinished pic – button, hem and pressing are due to occur sometime today.