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Completed: Linen Morgan Pants

In case you forgot, I still really love making pants.

I’ve had to slow my roll a bit lately because I ended up with waaaay more pairs of pants that I can seriously, feasibly wear during the course of winter (I never wear pants in the summer – unless I’m on an airplane or in a movie theater, where it’s always fucking freezing – and I’m really impressed with people who can manage it. Too damn hot!), and I sorely missed sewing them. I can get a little bit of a fix when I run a Jeans Workshop, but it’s not the saaaaaame, you know?

Anyway, it appears I’ve gone up a size this year, so a lot of my old clothes don’t fit right. So, lucky me – I get to make new ones! Starting with pants, because, again, first love.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a die hard when it comes to super tight, stretchy pants. I have loved that style ever since I first discovered it as a teenager (back when I learned how to use the sewing machine because I couldn’t find pants in that skinny cut – everything was flared at the time), and stuck with it over the decades. But I like branching out and trying new looks from time to time, such as this boyfriend jeans trend. The biggest upside to this look is that you don’t have to worry about stretch percentage when shopping for fabric – which is awesome and opens a whole WORLD of possibilities! Any fabric can be pants fabric if you put your mind to it!

This is my second go at the Morgan Boyfriend Jeans pattern from Closet Case Patterns (you can see my first pair, made of cotton twill, in this blog post). I re-traced the pattern to a size 4, since the size 2 I originally made was too small. These were still on the snug side when I first put them on, but thankfully the fabric has relaxed and I think the fit looks pretty good now.

The fabric! I actually used linen to make these – a beautiful marled gray-and-white bottomweight 100% linen that I picked up at my local fabric shop, Textile Fabrics, during one of their big sales. This was a huge remnant – I think I paid $20 for 3 yards. This fabric is usually around $20 for a single yard, so I definitely got a good price on this piece! It was pretty stiff when I first took it home, but after several washings it is thankfully starting to soften up. The fabric is not very thick – it’s more of a medium weight than a heavy weight – but it’s not see through, and it has enough of a heft that it doesn’t really wrinkle very much. In these photos, I have been wearing these pants for about 2 months – washed, machine dried and unironed. I’m really happy with the quality of this fabric, it’s really the perfect weight and thickness for a good pair of pants!

I also made my shirt, by the way! The pattern is the Sway Dress from Papercut Patterns, shortened to shirt length and sewn with a very lightweight raw silk that I bought in Egypt. I was 100% influenced by the Marlena Tank and wanted to make something similar. Mine is a lot more flared than the original inspiration- which is perfect in this drapey silk (seriously, I’ve never seen a raw silk this thin and drapey and omg I love it so much). I changed the construction of the top to mimic that of the Elizabeth Suzann – swapped out the facings for topstitched bias facings, and used French seams. I’ve probably sewn a thousand of those Marlena tanks, no lie, so putting this one together was like second nature (but not as fun on a non-industrial machine, ha!).

Anyway, back to my pants!

I had a lot of fun planning and sewing these! The black buttons are also from Textile Fabrics (and they were stupid expensive because they were ~imported from Italy~ ugh I mean come on), and the pocket lining is some black linen I had in my stash. I used black thread with a triple stitch for the topstitching, and thread bartacks in place of rivets. Rather than flat fell the seams, they are just serged and topstitched.

The back is my favorite part! I topstitched the pockets with some fun little swirlies, which I then mimicked on the leather waistband patch. It looks very designer to me. I’m a designer, you guys.

That’s all for this one! I will admit, I didn’t get to wear these as much as I had anticipated because it’s been soooo hot here, but they’ve finally had their place in the spotlight these past couple of weeks. I have the hems rolled up in these pictures, but I’ve been wearing them full length lately. They are hemmed slightly long; I wanted to make sure they were washed enough to get the shrink out before I hemmed them to the proper length. Seeing as I’ve washed and dried them probably a dozen times since finishing them, I should probably go ahead and re-hem. Maybe. Ha!

One last thing, I have ONE MORE jeans workshop for 2017, and it’s coming soooon!! I’ll be going back to Brooklyn to teach the Jeans Making Intensive in November and I can’t wait!

Tags: completed, jeans, jeans making intensive, linen, Morgan jeans, pants, workroom social

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Completed: Morgan Pants

27 Apr

I have a well-documented love for the Ginger Jeans pattern. In fact, I love making (and wearing!) this pattern so much, that I just stopped posting about it. After you finish the 10th pair of pants, it just feeling way too fucking redundant to keep posting the same pattern praise over and over again. Needless to say, I have a lot of pairs of these pants, and more in the works for next winter. No shame about that, but also, no blog posts. You are welcome in advance.

With that being said, I loooove making pants and I found myself very intrigued with the Morgan Boyfriend Jeans pattern, which is also from Closet Case Patterns. I loved the idea of being able to make pants with a non-stretch fabric – truly, it opens up an enormous world of pants-possibilities that I hadn’t been able to consider in the past. Plus, I could keep making pants but pretend like they were like, totally different. Mostly, though, I wanted some non-stretch twill pants. I love the Organic Cotton Twill that Mood Fabrics sells (and yes, I’ve made pants with it before! And shorts!) and I know from experience that it’s a great fabric that wears and washes super well. I had about 1.5 yards leftover from my Organic Cotton Twill Kelly Anorak, so I decided to make the pattern as a sort of wearable muslin.

Truth be told, I actually got the Morgan Jeans pattern for Christmas last year. My little brother bought it for me (at my request) and while I was PUMPED to sew it up, it’s been languishing in my sewing room ever since. Every time I pulled it out of the envelope and tried to creep on the size chart, I just got overwhelmed and confused. I don’t know why this particular size chart buggered me out more than any other size chart in the history of ever – but that’s my excuse! See, I’m technically between sizes in Closet Case Patterns (I’m about 1/2″ bigger than the size 2, and a 1/2″ smaller than the 4). In my pants-making experience with this company, the size 2 fits pretty well, and the 4 is waaaay too big. However, this pattern suggests that you size up if you’re between sizes – and I kept having flashbacks of my size 4 Gingers that needed a LOT of tweaking to get a good fit, as they were just too big. I chatted with Heather about it when I saw her in DC, and she suggested going with the 2, so I took her advice and did just that.

Y’all, I’m so glad I had a moment of craziness and decided to trace my pattern – I generally DO NOT trace my patterns, but the sizing question was giving me major pause and I thought I would be pretty sad if I ended up cutting the wrong one. Which is exactly what I did, because the size 2 is definitely too small! Oh well, live and learn!

With that being said – these pants I am modeling are the original size 2 that I made, so I did make them work. I had to let out the leg seams (basically the side seams from as close to the waistband as I could get, all the way to about the knee area) as much as my seam allowances allowed (it’s hard to tell now since they’re all finished, but I didn’t cut any fabric off when I serged as I was anticipating this, so, I’d reckon those seam allowances are probably about 1/4″ now). They were still pretty tight, but fortunately, woven fabrics like this tend to ease and relax throughout the course of the day. TBH, I don’t think I can ever put these pants in the drier because I don’t want them to shrink back up! (A far cry from me in my early 20s – when I’d walk around the house pantsless all day and only put on my pants literally right before I left to party, so they’d be as tight as possible haha!) But with the seam allowances let out, and the fabric all relaxed and happy – the fit on these is pretty much perfect! So no complaints on this pair – and I’m so so happy I was able to salvage them, as shit got a little hairy for a minute there – but I definitely will need to size up to a 4 for my next pair.

Other than the sizing snafu, I am pretty pleased with the overall fit of these pants! I will be the first to admit that they may not be the most flattering thing I could put on my ass – but I think that’s kind of the case with a relaxed fit pant like this, regardless? And they are also a little tight, still, so sizing up on the next pair will probably help with that too.

I did not make any adjustments to the pattern – including not futzing with the rise. I usually shorten the rise as I have a bit of a short crotch, but I wanted to see how these fit out of the envelope. And again, I think it’s pretty good! Since they’re more of a relaxed fit than the tight Gingers, my calves fit in the legs just fine. FYI the inseam of these is pretty long – I think I measured it at about 32″ (I don’t know why that wasn’t included in the finished measurements, but there ya go), which is a good 4″ longer than what my lil’ legs require. Since the legs are straight, though, you can just cut off the excess length – which is what I did! These are hemmed to be a normal full-length, by the way, I just have them rolled for the pictures because that’s how I’ve been wearing them!

And speaking of wearing them – I took these photos on day 3 of wearing these pants, so they are pretty relaxed! And that also explains all the wear wrinkles. Whatever! It’s cotton, it’s gonna wrinkle!

My favorite part about making pants is all the fun detailing you get to play with! Topstitching, contrast bartacks, fun pockets – yes please!

For these, I used a darker olive all-purpose thread with the triple stitch (I think it looks nicer than using topstitching thread – although it is a BITCH to unpick, so be warned if you decide to go that route!), and brown thread for the bartacks. The pocket lining is a batik fat quarter that I bought at Loose Threads, a quilt shop that I stumbled upon at random while in Harriman, TN a few weeks ago for the Barkley Marathons. I was not actively seeking a fabric store (honestly, we were just looking for coffee), but I saw the words “Quilt Shop” and we had to make a quick detour. There isn’t much that I can buy in a quilt shop – still haven’t caught the quilting bug, ha! – but I can stash some fat quarters as they are the perfect size and weight for pocket linings!

I skipped the back pocket topstitching as I wanted to keep these reasonably plain, but added a leather back patch like the instructions suggest. This leather was pulled out of my box of leather scraps – I’m not entirely sure where it originally came from, but it’s fairly thick. I had used this same leather to make luggage tags for my suitcases (yes I am a big dork), and that square was a leftover piece from the center cut-out. Since my machine had no problem going through the 2 layers to make the tags, I knew it would be fine with a single layer + the cotton twill. I didn’t even change the needle for this – just went to town and it turned out fine.

Anyway, that’s all for now! Have you tried this pants pattern yet? What is your take on the boyfriend jeans (whether they are secretly made for females or you actually steal your *real* boyfriend’s jeans… tell me about that too)?

*Note: The main fabric used in this post was provided to me by Mood Fabrics, in exchange for my participation in the Mood Sewing Network.

Tags: closet case patterns, completed, cotton twill, Mood Fabrics, Mood Sewing Network, Morgan jeans, organic cotton, pants, twill