Romero Trousers: Work in Progress

May I present to you the March project from my #2020makenine sewing plans?! Like last year, at the beginning of 2020, I chose nine pieces of fabric in my stash and promised to sew them up throughout the course of the year. Having just realised that I never shared my 2020 plans here on my blog, check it out below:

Fabric:

The piece of fabric in the middle of my 2020 selection is some AMAZING, mid-blue denim that I bought from Merchant & Mills in Rye last year. It's broken twill weave (my fave!), medium weight and just the nicest quality ever. I bought it without a precise project in mind. I have a self-imposed rule of only buying fabric if I can envision what I'll make from it, however I'm so glad that I ignore that rule this time. The medium weight lends itself well to a spring/autumn weight garment. The buttons I used were also from Merchant & Mills, from a separate trip. I was running low on blue thread and determined not to buy another reel, so I stitched them on with contrasting red thread. 

Pattern:

I'm very rarely an early adopter when it comes to sewing patterns. Sewing pattern styles usually have to grow on me, and I like to see other people's versions pop up on the interwebs before I, myself, commit. This pattern was somewhere in between for me though. It's not a newly released one (so I had the joy of exploring the hashtag), however I knew I wanted it as soon as I saw it. I felt my beautiful, medium-weight denim would work well for the cropped/'trans-season' style. I don't have any cropped trousers in my wardrobe currently, but I chose to keep the length as per the pattern (rather than follow my instinct to lengthen the pattern pieces to ankle length) so that this garment would fulfil a different function to my broken twill Lander pants. 

(image source: Pauline Alice)

I am a ginormous fan of sailor style trousers. I even made a pair almost exactly ten years ago! I wore those a lot, until the cheap, nasty fabric I used shrunk and faded. That was at the beginning of my Rockabilly phase, and even though I'm out the other side of that now, I still love that nautical-style button detail. 

Once I'd bought the PDF pattern, I took the rare (for me) step of getting the A0 file printed out in large format using the Fabric Godmother printing service. I usually print out the A4 file at home and spend an evening sticking all those sheets together, but this felt like a special occasion! Before cutting out my pattern, I laid my Lander pants pattern pieces over the top to compare them. I could see that I would need to alter the crotch curve of the Romeros a bit, and I preemptively curved the back waistband so it would sit nicely against my lower back. 

I haven't used a Pauline Alice pattern before, and it was fun to try out a new-to-me company. I believe her patterns are available in English, French and possibly also Spanish, which is awesome. The instructions were fairly clear, although the pocket/button stand construction was pretty complicated, and I had to wing it at a couple of points. 

(image source: Pauline Alice)

Thoughts:

Now that we're in lockdown in the UK, I'm rarely out of leggings and joggers at the moment. However, I made myself wear these on a recent trip to the shops so I could analyse the fit. Generally, they were great and I was super happy with them. However, there was one thing that was bothering me. Because of the construction of the pockets and fastening method, the side seam at the pocket mouth isn't straight, and the pocket facing won't sit very flat. You can even see this happening on the sample pair on the Pauline Alice website (pictured above), as well as in my pair (below). As much as I like having the pockets, I've decided to try to remedy this by stitching through the pocket and button stand, which will seal the pockets shut but should help that whole area sit more neatly. 

Another issue that I think I can improve on, is the rise. I didn't notice until I was going through these pictures, but the back rise is too high. I didn't even want to share that picture here because the look is a bit embarrassing if I'm honest. I'm going to scoop the crotch away a bit to give my bum some more space, which should fix this issue. I love these trousers and the fabric so much that I really want to go the extra mile and finesse them as much as I can. 

There's also something a bit weird going on with the fabric around the front crotch area. It's particularly noticeable in the image above. I'm not sure if it's a tightness caused by not enough space in the front rise (some kind of rounded pubis (!) situation?) or a pooling of fabric due to some other factor. If you have any ideas, please leave a comment! I may not try and address this last issue in this particular pair, but I'd like to learn from them for future versions.

It may not surprise you to learn that I plan to use this pattern again, with tweaks. Or I may frankenstein the fastening pieces onto the Lander pattern, seeing as I achieved a better fit generally with that pattern. I'd love to make some shorts next, perhaps in red twill or linen. It seems that my renewed sailor pants obsession is here to stay for a while...

Denim Leftovers Cleo

Here's a cute little pinafore that was not my intention to make. However, I have made it, and I'm very pleased that it exists. And even though I've already worn it several times, ridiculously, I feel weird about wearing it during Me-Made-May (and thus taking a photo of it), without having properly 'introduced it' here on my blog. Is that odd?! So, Ta da! Here it is and I now can go back to wearing it. 

When planning my broken twill denim Lander pants, I was a good girl and diligently bought the full quantity of fabric recommended (2.5m, FYI). However, after cutting them out, I found that if I were careful, I had enough fabric leftover to make another, adult-sized garment. My first thought was to make another Helen's Closet York pinafore (which I've made before), however I felt that this denim would be a bit thick for that one, so turned to the Tilly and the Buttons Cleo pattern for a classic denim pinafore style. 

You may or may not recall that I've used the Cleo pattern previously, with self-drafted pockets in a hefty black denim. I really love that pinafore and wear it a lot, but I took some lessons away from it and made some tweaks this time round. Firstly, I decided to make the shape slightly A-line from the hips downwards, and secondly I chose a length somewhere in between the options Tilly includes in her pattern. I think the length of my black version looks great, but I wouldn't feel comfortable in it without tights, and I predicted that it'd be more suitable for performing child-wrangling tasks with a slightly longer length hem. 

The last change I made was to draft a new pocket shape: partly because I had an itch to scratch in the form of a neatly topstitched, round-cornered patch pocket, and partly because I wanted to make mine a little different from the legion of Cleo pinafores out there in the world. 

Thoughts:

As I thoroughly stated in my denim Lander pants post, I REALLLLYYYYY love this broken twill denim. I'm thrilled that I could squeeze two garments out of the amount that I bought; this pinafore kind of feels like a freebie! However, I can't remember if I monkeyed with the side seams beyond making the shape more A-line, but this version feels looser than my black one. I'm not sure if I should summon the patience to unpick the facings around the side seams and bring it in a whisker, or if I should leave it 'future-proofed' against a little potential weight gain. I'm also not entirely sold on the length. Yes, it's more practical, but I do feel it looks more frumpy than the black version, and I'm 70% sure I should raise the length a little. What are your thoughts? But those are just some tweaks I need to consider, generally speaking I believe that this is a great garment, and, like with my Landers, I can't wait to see how the denim fades over time with wear and washing. 

Lander Pants: 70s Style

Agh! My photographer (Mr SoZo) and I experienced a host of technical difficulties which has resulted in the colours in these photos being really weird. But, you know, when it takes as much luck and effort as it does to get a rare sunny day during the winter, clear sufficient space in the lounge and then placate the children long enough to take some photos, there's no way I'm going to retake them! Hopefully I'll get some more accurate pictures of these trousers during Me-Made-May later this year. 

70s style denim flared trousers are a real dream sewing project of mine. Until last year, I had a thrifted pair somewhat similar to these that were originally from Topshop. I wore them fairly regularly (pregnancies and weight fluctuation sometimes getting in the way) for about six years. Then, one day, I looked at my back view in the mirror. Oh bejeezus did they fit me badly around the bum! Even though they still felt comfy and were fine from the front, I just couldn't un-see what I had seen; the bubble was burst. Off they went to the charity shop. Ever since then, I have been plotting and scheming to make myself some replacement 70s style denim flares. 

(image source: Fabric Godmother)

Fabric: 

So what was the impetus to finally get to making these now? Well, my dream fabric landed in my lap. Well, not literally. It actually landed on a shelf at my fave fabric purveyor, Fabric Godmother. I have a very soft spot for denim in general, but this, THIS, is my one true love: broken twill denim. Seriously, I considered abusing my savings and buying the whole bolt. If you're not sure what broken twill denim is, basically, it's this: instead of the distinctive diagonal twill weave of regular denim, broken twill weave looks like zigzags (see below). Wrangler used broken twill denim a lot in the 70s, and many moons ago I found an amazing pair of vintage Wrangler jeans in a charity shop that I made into a denim mini skirt. I wore the living shizzle out of that skirt, and now that I think about it, I was wearing that skirt when I met Mr SoZo nearly eleven years ago! I digress...

(image source: Indiamart)

This broken twill denim that Fabric Godmother is currently stocking is a lovely mid-blue (in reality a bit darker than the pics of my denim trousers). It's 100% cotton and a medium-to-heavy weight, so suitably sturdy for the Lander pants pattern I planned to use. 

Pattern:

Of course, I am not the first to either make the True Bias Lander pants in denim, or to acknowledge this pattern's potential for realising your 70s denim flares fantasy. However, I did spend a sizeable amount of time researching 70s jeans pocket shapes and drafting what looked right to me (oh, and even longer positioning and repositioning them endlessly during construction!).  

This wasn't my first dalliance with the Lander pants pattern. Last year I made a very successful wearable toile of the shorts version. I spent a lot of time tweaking the pattern but used some random olive green twill in my stash that I wasn't mad about, so I really wasn't expecting to love or wear them as much as I did. 

What you won't have seen on any of my sosh medias is my second stab at this pattern. I had such high hopes for it, but the result was a massive pile of meh. I made the full length version in some navy suiting from my stash with metal buttons with little anchors on for the fly. I used the pattern's original front and back pockets, but rounded the corners for a slightly different take. Sounds alright, no? They weren't. The end result was so blah: disappointment levels were high. I forced myself to wear them a couple of times on the school run to see if I could warm to them, but no. I think the over arching problem lay with the fabric: they looked too office-wear, not cute naval officer as I'd hoped. And my doctoring of the pocket shapes hadn't been jazzy enough to elevate them. However, what they did teach me was that I could use a couple of additional tweaks to the pattern before embarking on another attempt.

The navy suiting pair taught me that I might have been a bit over zealous with my previous curving of the originally-straight waistband. I'd also been too heavy-handed by pinching out far too much from the back waist darts in my attempt to eliminate any sway back gaping. Somehow, the over-correction of these issues weren't really visible in my shorts version, but they became apparent in the full-length version. I sorted out those alterations before cutting into this beloved denim, and I feel that readdressing both was time well spent. 

Thoughts:

I love these trousers so much, and I'm so excited to see the denim age with wear and laundering. The fit is great and I've already worn them heaps. The higher waist of this pattern means that these work well with some of the garments, and in some outfit combos, that my low-rise Ginger jeans don't work so well with. And as the weather warms up, it'll be fun to discover new outfits to wear them in.   

If I were being hyper critical, I would point to two 'flaws'. You can't see the first here, but since these pics were taken, the buttons have shifted to the very edge of their buttonholes, resulting in a 1cm strip of the fly piece below now becoming visible. I thought I had positioned the buttons with due care, but I'm wondering if using a keyhole rather than regular buttonhole setting has contributed to this. Seriously though, I'm well aware that no one else in the world, aside from serious sewing nazis, would probably notice it.  

The second point that gives me slight pause is in regard to the fit through the leg. A lot of the vintage jeans I found images of were more fitted through the thigh, and flared out more from the knee. The Landers are fitted around the waist and hips and the leg shape is straight from the top of the thigh down to the ankle, which gives the illusion of a gradual flare starting at the top of the leg. This distinction is why I'd refer to these as denim trousers, rather than jeans. Someday I might scratch that itch with the Closet Case Patterns Ginger flared jeans expansion pack, but in the meantime, I'm sure I'll get much wear and joy from these.