Jeans! Glorious Jeans!

Remember these photos?

I know you were supposed to be checking out the jacket, but there is something else to check out.  Wait!  Are...are those Handmade Jeans??  Why yes! Yes they are!!  Ha ha!  I snuck them in right under your noses!  :)  Oh Meigan, you are a sly one!  Yeah, I know.  I planned on everyone being distracted by my sweet brown jacket to notice them. 

So here are some non-distracting photos of the first pair of my handmade-by-me jeans!!

 

Back views:

Overall, I am thrilled with these jeans.  Yes, they need a few tweaks, but honestly, they fit much better than any RTW pair that I own.  Boo-yah! 

The details:  I made the normal rise version of the jeans.  I usually find that low rise jeans stretch and then fall down, which forces me to wear a belt and I dislike wearing belts with jeans. 

I trimmed down the leg flare to half of the original flare.  I drew straight lines on the pattern from the knee to the hem and then folded the flared portion over to meet the straight line.  Voila!  Half of the original flare.  I have short legs, and I feel that widely flared pants make my legs look stumpy, whereas a little bit of flare adds balance to my hip width.  (How many times can I use the word "flare" in one paragraph? Seven.)

I traced size AA and added about 1/4" to the sides of the hip because the widest part of my hip is lower than the pattern's.  I shortened the legs 3" centered at the knee, because like I said, I have short legs. 

I used stretch denim with 3% lycra that I bought from Denver Fabrics.  The pattern recommends 4% lycra or a 20% stretch cross-grain.  The 3% was more than enough.  In fact, I think it was too stretchy and will use denim with even less stretch in the future.  When I had the jeans all assembled the back yoke was gapping like crazy.  My 2 muslins didn't gap so I have to blame the stretchiness of the fabric.  I took 2 darts in the yoke starting right above the topstitching going up to the waist.  One issue with jeans is that a tremendous amount of topstitching has to be done prior to assembling the jeans, so it's a little late to do some fixes.  If the topstitching hadn't already been done I would have been able to take a tuck from top to bottom through the entire width of the yoke.  As a result, the bottom of the yoke is a little too long and looks a little wavy.

Speaking of top-stitching, I used Gutermann Mara 30 top-stitch thread in color #886.  I have recently started to buy my thread and zippers from Wawak.com and they are GREAT, I highly recommend them.

In the spirit of knowledge and education I will go through the picky tweaks I will do when I make these jeans up next.  First up is the back:

You can see the waviness of the back yoke along the top-stitching line.  I will make the yoke both shorter (side to side) and slightly narrower (from top to bottom), since I can pinch out fabric both a horizontally and vertically.

In the photo above, I am pinching out some fabric under the butt, so we'll pinch that out on the pattern piece as well.

Also, I will serge the raw edge of the belt loops before top-stitching them.  This is how they look after being washed and dried.  (I warned you that I was going to be picky!)

Now for the front:

 

 

You can see wrinkles between my waist and hip.  There is too much length here and I will take a 3/4" wedge out of the pattern to hopefully fix that. 

The waistband is a smidge tight when I sit.  Since the denim had so much stretch I didn't cut it on the bias as the pattern suggests but cut it on the grain instead, and I interfaced it.  After assembling the jeans and seeing the gapping yoke and noticing how stretchy it was, I took action (it was probably too much action).  I really hate when jeans fit great right out of the drier and then stretch as they are worn and then fall down.  So...I added a line of twill tape (at the back only) along the bottom of the waistband so it could not stretch out.  Well...I wish it could stretch a little bit. 

Those are my tweaks for Jeans #2.  My next pair is already cut out.  This time I am swinging the lycra pendulum the other way and using denim with no stretch!  Apart from the back yoke tweaks, I am only making length adjustments, and hoping for an even more perfect pair.  :)