Pants That Fit and Pants That Don't

I got out a couple of commercial pants patterns on Saturday so I could compare them to my pants sloper. The first was Simplicity 9647:

I haven’t made these. The only pants pattern I’ve made is the Style Arc Linda pants, which I’ll get to in a moment. I bought this Simplicity pattern because I am drawn to this classic trouser style.

[This pattern even has a view with shorts. Many years ago, before children, when I was still working at my job in Baltimore, I bought a pair of hot pink wool shorts at a Bennetton store in downtown Seattle. I was there on a business trip, probably in 1991 (with no idea that one of my kids would be living there 30 years later). The shorts hit just above my knee and I wore the heck out of them. Don’t worry, I am not going to show up at church some Sunday in hot pink wool shorts. The days when I could wear something like that are long gone.]

I put the back pattern piece from the Simplicity pattern on the design wall and laid my pants sloper over it, aligning the patterns at the crotch, the waistline and at the grainline markings.

What does this tell me? It tells me that the rise on most pants patterns is too short, which I already knew. The crotch shaping is also slightly different. The biggest difference is the way that leg hangs along the hip and below the crotch. If I made up this pattern as is, I would have a huge amount of fabric bagging at the back of my legs. (These are a wider leg style than my muslin, but that would be an excessive amount of fabric.) If I attempt to use this pattern, I suspect I will have to make an adjustment similar to the one Kenneth made when we drafted my sloper, which was to slice the leg horizontally mid-thigh and scoot the bottom half over to balance the lower leg. I’m going to repeat this exercise with the front pattern piece and my front leg sloper to see what I think.

The Style Arc Linda pants pattern matches my sloper much more closely, which is probably why I’ve had good success with that pattern. I wore a pair of my Linda pants to church yesterday and I am still pleased with the fit.

As I recall, I did have to lengthen the rise about an inch. Also, the Linda pattern is designed for stretch wovens, so there is some slop built in.

Making pants will be an ongoing project for the next couple of months, I think. It’s a puzzle, and I like puzzles.