Pants Fitting

I have made 6 pairs of pants and have been moderately pleased with one of them. I have been using the Palmer / Pletsch book on Fitting Pants for Real People. They have a lot of great suggestions on how to fit pants. Their main suggestion is to tissue fit the pattern and make adjustments to the paper before you even cut your material. After sewing 2 pairs of pants that I couldn't even get on, I decided this was the way to go. However, I had trouble tissue fitting, I kept making the pants too big so I decided to buy some muslin and trace pattern pieces on to that.

I basted the muslin pattern pieces together as if I were sewing the pants (but also wanted to be able to rip them apart to use as pattern pieces once I was done). This approach really helped me see what was going on. In the pictures below, you can see that I have lots of issues with how the pants hang in the back. I made many alterations including deepening the crotch curve (many times!), letting out the inseams, and messing with the side seams.


I still was not happy with the way they looked, so after I was certain that the inseams were let out enough I decided to do the vertical tuck that the book suggests. The tuck ended up replacing the back darts and I had to let out the side seams at the hips a bit but it really seems to make a positive difference. My camera battery died so I do not have a picture of the muslin at this stage but I decided the pants looked good and began ripping them apart so I could cut out my fabric.

I can't decide which fabric to use so my pattern pieces have been sitting there waiting for me to use them. I am dying to know how they will look but I am also afraid that they won't look good, so I'm stalling. I have some navy blue gabardine in my stash so I think I will just use that. Tomorrow we have 3 soccer games (one for each girl) so I doubt there will be much sewing going on. Maybe Sunday.