The Clover Chronicles

On Thursday, I went a long way toward realizing my dream of making the Clover pants.  And it wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd thought it would be - but true to form I made it a lot harder than it needed to be, mostly because  I spent so much time procrastinating and taking breaks.  Here's how my day went:

7:00  Got up, ate breakfast and got dressed.  Spent a fair amount of time doing "internet research" on pattern adjustments for these pants.

10:00  Finally decided that I should get started.

Traced the pattern pieces.

Took a break.

Cut out and marked the fabric.

Took a break.

12:00  Ate lunch.  Did some more internet research.  Results inconclusive.

1:00  Decided to finally dive in and sew up the pants.

Done sewing by 2:00.

The moment of truth - trying them on.  SO scary!

But they weren't too bad!

I had my normal issues with pants:  gaping at the back waist and extra fabric at the right hip.  But now that I've done the body map, I knew that the excess at the right hip wasn't just my imagination or a seam allowance gone wrong!  And guess what - when I started pinning it out, I took out a total of 1/2" there - just like my body map said I should!  I ended up pinning out almost 2.5" at the center back.


**WARNING:  DERRIERE PICTURES FOLLOW**
Disclaimer:  as weird as I feel putting these pictures on the internet, I'm doing it anyway in the hopes that it might help someone else who wants to make these pants.  In all my research, I didn't find any pictures of muslins in the process of being altered - most people just mentioned as an aside what kinds of alterations they did.  But I'm the kind of person who needs to SEE it!

Here's the excess pinned out at the center back and right hip.  I was twisting around so there's some wrinkling at the back of the legs which isn't as pronounced when I stand straight, although there's a little more fabric there than I'd like.  I'm still researching how to handle this.

A view from the front.  At this point, I had resewn the back and right side seams to the new measurements.  Not perfect, but not too bad either.

From the right, with excess removed.

And from the left, with safety pins standing in for a zipper.

I made Version 1, not realizing they were very cropped.  When I make my final version, I'm planning on making them ankle length.

Once I had resewn the pants with the adjustments and tried on the fit, I took off most of the waistband so I could transfer my new markings onto my pattern pieces.

Waistband removed.

Drawing in the adjustments.

The new center back seam line and cutting line.

The new right hip seam line.

Conclusions:

These sit lower than I was hoping for, so I may have a long rise.

I still need to figure out how to deal with the extra fabric at the back of my thighs.

I'm a little concerned that the stretch fabric will end up being baggy after a few hours of wear.  My plan is to put the muslin back together and add a zipper, then wear them around for a day to see how they do and how I feel in them before making up the "real" pair.

All in all though, I think this was a pretty successful first go, and I'm feeling confident about moving ahead with this pattern!