Sew Distracted

The second pant muslin

Once again I am here in my hotel room in NYC with a big happy grin on my face and my poor tired feet propped up on the bed following another fabulous day.  

I've just come in from a wonderful dinner that Marji arranged with a group of charming and very talented sewing bloggers.  Marji has a great group photo so you really need to go over there and check it out.  Of course Marji and I were both there as were Carolyn, Robin, Claudine, LindsayT, and NancyK.

T he sewing class has been also been very productive and a lot of fun.  We were the first of the students to arrive in the classroom this morning and we got right to work.  I finally threaded up a machine and started stitching up my second pants muslin, and Marji continued to work on her jacket.  There were also brief lessons from both Susan Khalje and Kenneth King.  Then I got my second fitting by Kenneth, which was very interesting.  

On the first pant fitting Kenneth had only marked changes to the right leg, and on the second fitting there were more changes to the right leg as well as a few changes to the left, but not necessarily the same changes on the right and the left.  A second fairly good size tuck was folded out of the right rear pant piece, and you can see the two folded pieces in the photo at right and again below.   The second tuck folded another 1 1/2 inches out of the inner seam just below the crotch curve as you can see in this close up of the same area.

On the right front pattern piece, where a significant tuck had also been previously taken in on the first fitting, Kenneth had pinned out another small dart, this one shown with the red line formed by a tracing wheel .  This little dart was translated into an equivalent move in the shaping of the front crotch curve and seam as shown in this picture.

The center back seam was also moved to the right at the waist.  Shown in this picture is the corresponding left back piece which had to be extended the center back waist to accommodate the move, after which the darts were repositioned so they are balanced on either side of the new center back.

Very few changes were made to the left leg of the pants muslin.  A large tuck was taken out of the back, similar to the one on the right, and a small tuck was taken out of the front, but not nearly as significant as the corresponding tucks on the right.  The hip curve on the left was pretty much left alone, unlike the one on the right,  where the front hip was pretty much redrawn as a straight line down from the waist (the straight black line in this photo).  

T hen the curve of the corresponding back piece was extended at the hip making a much more pronounced hip curve on the back piece, which you can see in this last picture.  Of course the point is not how the final pattern pieces look, but that the final garment looks straight and balanced and symmetrical on me when I am wearing it and we seem to be making good progress in that direction.  

Tomorrow, pant muslin number 3.  I hadn't anticiapted that the pants would take so long.  Do I mind?  No.  Getting a great muslin is worth the effort.  Once that has been accomplished, the pants are easy.

Perhaps with luck I will even get started on that second blouse muslin. 

New York: We have pants

I got the pant muslin done and, wonder of wonders it worked on the first try.  There are bits of tweaking to be done, but over all I think I am close, very close.  

I started the muslin at 4:00 yesterday afternoon.  There are actually two patterns I wanted to work with and I started with this one mostly because I thought it would be the easiest based on the old pant muslin I had as a starting point.  Besides, it is a style that has historically been very good for me.

Pattern:  style 105 from the October 2006 Burda WOF magazine.

I traced the 44, which I actually thought might be a little small and I was right.  Bummer that.  Then I laid my old pant muslin from 2005 over the pattern to see what obvious adjustments I might need to make.   The left front was perfect (so does this mean I am 25% a size 44?).

The right front needed an inch at the waist going straight down and tapering to nothing at the hip.

The back needed more work.  I needed to raise the waist about an inch, and add more width at the waist too, tapering down.    I did not need the same amount of width on the left as on the right, nor the same taper.  I also needed to change and lengthen the back crotch curve.  None of these things surprised me.  My back is flatter and long than my front.  

I tried the Burda pants first because in the past I have grumbled that Burda patterns are often short through the torso for me, need a lot of alterations but I hadn't tried pants.  I had assumed I was long through the lower torso as well, until I did that body mapping earlier, when I learned that I was actually pretty short from waist to hip.  I thought it was possible that the Burda might work, and it does.  I need more room at the high hip because I move from my waist measurement to my hip measurement very quickly.

After tracing, marking and cutting the pattern I was very very tired.  After making dinner I just sat and watched television with G, drinking a glass of wine and catching up on email.  I figured I might not get to the muslin last night, but I was too tired to care.  I was also annoyed with myself for slacking on the exercise front.  If I had continued with my exercise regime from August and September I might have fit into the size 44 pant or smaller.  Vanity, vanity all is vanity.  I thought I would work out late, when G went to bed.  Instead, at 9, feeling refreshed I started sewing.

Really the hardest part of making pants is the fitting.  Once you have a pattern they are quick to pull together.  Despite getting my zipper discombobulated again (invisible side zip on these pants) and discovering that I had marked the seam lines and darts on the front side of the front pant pieces rather than the back side of the fabric I had them finished by 10:30.  The fit, in a dark mirror in a dark house was good enough for class.  

Now the question.  I plan on making these out of black wool crepe.  I have to wash some bemberg today to use as lining.  I would have sworn I had washed black bemberg, but I don't.  I also have some brown wool crepe that I could use for these pants and I could take that.  I have no brown lining fabric so that will have to be dealt with in NYC.

Or I could take the gray flannel and the other pant pattern I intended to make, the pants from Vogue 2922.  

If I take the brown I need to steam the wool crepe but I can do that this afternoon.  If I take the grey I just need to wash the bemberg.  If I don't take the grey I can continue looking for the Alice and Olivia pattern I originally intended to use to make the grey trousers and do it at home later.  

I'm not sure it matters which pants I make.  Once I have one pant muslin fitted, everything else is just variations on a theme, or at least so I think.  

Today I have to figure out these packing issues, get packed, and exercise.  I need to find a new way to get the workout back into my routine.  I miss the early morning workouts before breakfast.  But the current reality is that I can't get up early enough to get up before G.  Anytime after 1 AM, if I get up he will be up with me.  I have to go to bed before midnight also or G will be up and keep me up, so that puts a quash on working out late.  If I work out after 9, no matter how tired I am I can't go to sleep before midnight and I'm doubly screwed.  

This will be my goal for December:  working out a way to get reasonable amounts of sewing time, knitting time, and workout time.  It is a tall order.  It is also all I want for Christmas.

And because I promised a friend, here is a picture of the blue cotton fabric I am using for the princess shirt.  It is a lovely shirting recently acquired from Michael's in a lovely shade of blue.  I don't have appropriate shirt buttons either, so although I 'should' spend all my time sewing, I will also be spending some of my time shopping.  I hope Marji wants to shop too, we buy so many of the same fabrics it would be really fun to go to a fabric store with her.