Finally, Pants that FIT

My coat and trouser classes in Tacoma were AMAZING. I am lousy at documenting my experiences in the moment, so I only have one photo, but if you visit Ryliss Bod’s Instagram account—which you should follow anyway if you are a sewist—you can see a few more photos of the trouser class.

I left last Wednesday and powered across Washington state, making great time until I got to North Bend, where I-90 meets 18S. That area has been a mess since DD#1 started college at Pacific Lutheran back in 2010. A four-lane highway coming up from Tacoma funnels down to two lanes at the I-90 interchange, and the bottleneck there has always been an issue. WADOT is widening that area, so the bottleneck is really spectacular now. (I took a different route coming back.) I made it to the AirBnB by dinner time and settled in. Tacoma is known as a rather rough area, but my accommodations were in a lovely neighborhood called Old Town.

On Thursday morning, I drove the ten minutes to the Sewing and Design School and met Ryliss for my coat class. I did an interview with Ryliss on the podcast (episode 41) if you want to know more about her and the School. Although I had my green coat fabric with me, Ryliss suggested we use something less precious for the first version. She has a collection of three-yard chunks of various coat fabrics that she has amassed over the years, so we looked through them together. In the end, I settled on a gray-and-turquoise plaid. The coat is still in the car, which I haven’t unloaded completely, so you’ll get a photo of it tomorrow. I chose the plaid because I liked the colors and because I haven’t worked with many plaids. Details about that class will accompany the photo of the coat.

Friday was the first day of our two-day class with Kenneth D. King. I have been hearing Kenneth’s name for years because he is a contributing editor to Threads magazine. When the opportunity to take a class with him presented itself, I leaped at it. It was worth every penny and more. Kenneth lives in NYC and teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology. We began our trouser drafts by pairing up and taking measurements of each other. My table partner was a woman from California who teaches sewing at her local community college.

Once we had the numbers, Kenneth took us, step by step, through the process of drafting a basic pattern. This was the only photo I took, because I was so gobsmacked to see the numbers translated into a pattern that looked like it might actually fit my body, No low-rise pants here!

Kenneth is an amazing teacher. He did not move on to the next step of the process until he had assured himself that we were all following along.

By about 3 pm, each student had a customized pattern. We used the last hour of class to cut out our muslins, adding a generous seam allowance to facilitate fine-tuning.

I had lots of great plans to visit the Joann Fabrics at Tacoma Mall, which was only 10 minutes down the road, but I was so mentally exhausted Friday evening that all I did was drag myself back to the AirBnB to eat dinner and vegetate before bed.

Saturday morning—much refreshed—I sewed together my muslin and inserted a zipper. This was not heirloom sewing; Kenneth just wanted to see the pants on each of us so he could adjust them as needed. I put mine on and thought they fit reasonably well. He said, “Those look pretty damn good,” but he made a few adjustments anyway. I have a very flat butt, so he contoured the back of the pants to look a bit less baggy. He also moved the bottom half of the back of the pant leg over by half an inch to eliminate a diagonal drag line. Getting to see the fitting process on each person was very educational. I am reasonably sure I could diagnose most problems. The difficult part is transferring the adjustments on the fabric to the flat pattern. He has 40+ years of training and experience doing that. I don’t.

I cut out two new back legs and reassembled my pants. I tried on the second iteration and immediately felt like I had hit the jackpot. My test of a well-fitting garment is if it feels like I am not wearing it—no tugging, readjusting, nothing. These pants fit so well I might as well have been naked. Kenneth approved version 2.0, at which point I was pretty much done. I watched him fit some of the other students while I hemmed the bottom and sleeves of my coat.

The last hour of class was spent learning how to use our slopers to make various styles of pants. Kenneth is coming back next June to teach a trouser construction class—three days of making samples of various trouser details—and I think I am going to sign up for that one.

The trip home yesterday was uneventful as traffic was very light. I’ve got lots to do here, including making myself another test pair of pants from my sloper.