trouser sewalong

It’s the final day of the Trouser Sewalong. I really can’t believe it’s coming to an end. Again, sorry for all the delays. I’ve been undergoing lots and lots of stress lately. I have yet to show you my pairs and to show off some of yours, which I plan to do too. It will be weird for me to focus my attention on other things now. I feel I’ve been thinking about and talking about pants for an awfully long time.  So it is that now I present my last Trouser Sewalong tutorial. The hem. I don’t know that there is anything particularly hard or complex about hemming your pants. However, I will say, hem up your trouser shell first and then do the lining, if indeed you opted for a lining. I’ve done the reverse too many times to count and have always had to unpick and redo because the lining was too long. The biggest idea I want to focus on today is tailoring the cuff, if you want a cuff that is. If you don’t, stick to your normal hemming method. But the cuff. And tailoring it, here we go.

I’ll say right now that I’m not terribly good about planning for cuffs. I added a good 3 1/2 inches + the 2 1/2 inches I wanted for the cuff. Still, I should have added 4 1/2 inches instead of just 3 1/2. I like leaving a good 1 – 1 1/2 inches on the inside of the pant leg. However, if you are anything like me and you allowed all this extra for the cuffs and such you might find that you still have plenty to work with. I always find that for some reason, there’s more length than I actually needed. In fact I ended up cutting off 2 1/2 inches for the lining (and I even cut the lining shorter). So weird, since I know that I planned perfectly on the muslin.

First off, press your pants. Press the body, then the legs on both sides. Now turn your pants inside out and pin up the lining out of the way with safety pins. Start by pressing a 1/2 inch up on the trouser shell. Next pin up the 3 1/2 inches (or whatever you allowed for the excess beyond the cuff). Turn your pant shell right side out and pin up the cuff. Try on the trousers with your shoes and see where the hem falls and if that’s where you want it.

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This is not a post that I actually wanted to write, because when I’m faced with this problem, I don’t have an easy and clean solution. Rather, its involved and somewhat messy. Grrr…. I have been getting questions about it and since the sewalong is technically not over because I haven’t posted my final post on the hem, I’ll talk about what I do. I’ll admit right now, it’s rather hateful. Here goes:

If you have no idea of what is going on, or you haven’t gotten to this part yet let’s fill you in. The problem is handling the lining and/or the waistband facing when you have a zipper that goes up into the waistband instead of the waistband having a button or other type of closure. Its a conundrum because when using an invisible zipper the lining and the facing don’t play nice with each other.  I would normally just baste the lining to the shell fabric and insert said zipper and have the facing come down over the top. No big deal. But that’s for a normal zipper. Invisibles don’t work well in this environment. At least they don’t for me. In fact, I went about doing this exact thing on my black pair of trousers just a few nights ago and did it work? No. The lining made the zipper slip out of whack and then warpage, not to mention the end of the zip was rubbing and itching up against my leg. No. Good. Much cursing and swearing ensued as I unpicked.

The coming morning I tackled the zipper again. This time, no cheating. Even Mr. S says you can’t cheat death and you definitely cannot cheat an invisible zipper. So after I had cleaned up my unpicking nightmare, I went about my rotten way of inputting an invisible with a lining and a facing. First, I unpicked the lining about 3 inches into the waistband. Then I restitched the waistband and the trouser shell together, backstitching a few times just before I hit the lining piece I had just unpicked a few inches. Then I did the same thing to the part where the lining was still attached. You with me so far? I know. It’s a mess. I would love to hear if you have a different way of doing this. OK. Now I pinned the lining out of the way, because if I don’t, inevitably I always end up getting it caught in with the zipper.

Then I inserted the zipper. No big deal. Again, here’s my post on invisible zipper inserts. After the zipper is inserted, I tack the lining back to the waistband at the top and then slip stitch it to the zipper, with the raw edge nicely and neatly folded inside. I’ve done that here in red for you.

For the waistband facing, I fold over the top, right sides together and stitch, blindly, on the outside of the zipper. This works best with a zipper foot. You sidle the zipper foot up along the ridge of the zipper teeth, which you can’t see, but you can feel and stitch. Works pretty well, though you would almost think it wouldn’t. There’s a great article for how to do it here.

Then you can go ahead and slip stitch the facing to the waistband.

Why all this trouble? I don’t know. In fact I can’t even give you a good answer. This whole process took the longest on the pants. About a good 2 to 3 hours. I mean it does end up looking awfully nice. And if done right, surprisingly invisible zippers have a good amount of strength with all that fabric and of course stabilization from the interfacing you decide to use.

Tomorrow is definitely the hemming. I promise. Cross my heart. Sware on my life. And then we’re really done! Yay! In the mean time, I have some other fun things up my sleeve. The best of luck, should you dare to do this ridiculous method. Please share if you have a better answer than the above. We all need it.

xoxo,

Sunni

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I decided not to do a step by step zipper insertion on the trousers because I’ve done one already. Two in fact, and either or will do the trick. I plan to do an invisible zip on both my pairs of trousers. And you know how I feel about invisible zips, and if you don’t here’s the post I did on how to insert one.

If you feel your fabric is a little to thick to handle an invisible zipper, you have the option of doing a regular zip. Handpicked and lapped is my favorite method. Here’s my method and there’s also this one from Gertie’s blog and this one from the Sewaholic.

Metal zippers from JamieDeLongVintage on Etsy

To top this whole thing off, I’m going to let you in on a secret too. The zippers they make these days are sadly, not as durable as vintage zippers made of actual metal. Especially the invisible ones. So if you are in the market for a metal zipper, which you will not find at your local Joann, take your hunt to Ebay and Etsy. And if you score an invisible metal zipper, you are one lucky duck indeed. I’ve only found one and that in pale pink.

Oh my goodness! It’s onto hemming next! Almost there!

xoxo,

Sunni

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Behind the scenes of this sewalong, I’ve been trying to stay a few steps ahead. It was in this spirit that I put together a black pinstriped pair of Burda #127. It was also in this spirit that I found my efforts with the bias waistband foiled. It continued to bubble even though I had let the bias section hang for days and then tried a number of different stabilizers and put the facing on the striaght grain. Still no luck. Still there was bubbling and it looked as if I had a very weird body problem going on in the waist. And I can’t just put the waistband on the straight grain. There is NO WAY I’m matching the plaids, stripes or any other imaginable design on these trousers with the waistband. IMPOSSIBLE! The pleats and darts do not allow it. I’m a real stickler for these types of things too and so I soon found that I had to make the bias thing work somehow.

Thankfully, I’m here to tell you what works. Hopefully you still have a few extra scraps of your trouser fabric left to make amends for this. I began to seriously look at some RTW trousers. This past week, I poked around in my closet, looking for some pants to wear and remembered that indeed, I don’t really have any that fit quite right at the moment. The whole reason I’m making these new ones. And then these old pinstriped blackies caught my eye. A rather rotten polyester pair, that don’t fit and have not yet been tossed into the recycling pile. And then of course, I saw the “epiphany.” As you can see, these pants have a waistband that is cut on the bias. In fact, they have a waistband that is cut in two pieces, both on the bias, both create a chevron pattern (meaning that each was cut on a different bias to correspond) then stitched together and this creates a waistband that will not bubble. The pulling effect from the top section cut on the bias cancels out the pulling effect of the bottom section cut on the bias and vice versa. I’m sorry, but this is seriously cool to me. Do you realize that not only does this create a more interesting design for the trousers themselves whilst also solving the problem of matching patterns whilst also creating a beautiful fit in the waistband? Three birds with one stone. Please tell me that a cry of delight just escaped your lips! One escaped mine and at that moment, you could have never met a happier girl. Let me show you how to create it:

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Lining trousers can greatly increase their longevity. Not to mention it feels utterly luxurious to have lined trousers. Granted not all pants are meant to have a lining. For instance jeans. But many pant styles benefit greatly from having a lining.

The thing to keep in mind with lining a pair of trousers is the pocket. The pocket should be sandwiched in between the trouser shell and the lining. This also means that while you’ll retain certain aspects of the shell, such as the pleat in the front and the dart in the back, you’ll blend the pocket pattern piece into the trouser leg to cut the lining. Make sense? Here’s what I did to cut the lining for Burda #127:

The pocket affects the trouser leg front. So I took my pocket (not the pocket lining, just the pocket) and my trouser leg front and lined them up into one pattern. I taped them lightly to secure both of them together. I also messed with the hem. Just a bit. I folded both the front and back legs up the 2 1/2 inches I added for the cuff. This will still leave a good 3 inches for the hem. And then I cut the trouser leg fronts and then the backs. So you only need to cut the trouser legs for the lining as the waistband is faced.  And that is that. Pretty easy really.

Tic Tac Toe, there you go. Tomorrow we’re going to start stitching, so get those machines oiled.

xoxo,

Sunni

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Sorry for this delay! Oh my! My internet was down over the weekend, the weather was crummy and pictures could not be taken and to top everything off I found that there was not enough of the fabric I was going to use for the construction process. Sheesh! Not to worry, internet is back up and working, all the posts are finished and awaiting their day to post, and I opted to sew a pair of linen trousers in lieu of the Spring that is just around the corner. Today I’m going to start covering the final construction of our trousers. Oh Happy Day! Here’s a rundown of the schedule:

♥ January 26 ~ Cutting of the shell, the underlining (optional) and the interfacing
♥ January 27 ~ Cutting of the lining (optional)
♥ January 28 ~ Stitching the pant shell
♥ January 29 ~ Stitching and attaching the lining
♥ January 30 ~ Stitching and attaching the waistband
♥ January 31 ~ Inserting the zipper
♥ February 1 ~ The hem

I realize I’m posting during the weekend. You can go at your own pace, I’m just trying to provide the information before you get there. Don’t worry, whether you finish your pants today, next week or next year feel free to post your images in the flickr pool!

Today we’re going to talk about cutting into your fabric. But before you go cutting, make sure you pretreat your fabric, your lining (if you have one), the interfacing and the interlining (if you have one). I decided not to cover pretreating fabric because I think we all have very strong opinions on how we like to pretreat certain fabrics. Be it known that I do. And I have a personal distrust of dry cleaners and will only dry clean very particular garments. Otherwise I do all my own fabric care and such, thank you very much. However, you may love your dry cleaner and more power to you. More power to you!!! If you are not sure how to proceed with pretreating fabrics there is an excellent article here on the Colette Patterns blog. After pretreating, do be sure to press all fabrics concerned.

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