One of the activities i do when I’m not working is teach sewing classes at work along with some other lovely folks. One of them wanted to test out the Hudson Pants pattern from True Bias so a bunch of us got together to make them. Everybody picked a different fabric and different size so it was a good way to get a lot of opinions at once.
I went with some purple sweatshirt fabric that I think I’ve had in my stash for probably close to a decade. It felt great to finally use it! Because it had very little stretch, I bumped up 2 sizes. And because the Hudson pants run slim and I prefer my lounge pants a little looser, I bumped up another size. So I measure between a 4/6 and ended up making a 12 and was pretty happy with the very relaxed fit it resulted in. I’d probably make it around an 8 if I had fabric with stretch.
I followed the pattern pretty much exactly. I tend to do things out of order to minimize trips to the sewing machine, serger and iron, but otherwise mostly followed the pattern. I made two changes, one cosmetic and the other for fit. The first was to add a decorative border to the pockets. Really happy with how that turned out. Since I wasn’t using a stretchy fabric anyways, I used some fun squirrel print cotton for the inside of the pockets.
The second was to change the cuffs. Since the pattern was written for stretchy fabric, the cuffs were drafted slightly smaller than the ankle opening. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even get them over my ankles and I couldn’t stretch them to gather the ankle of the pants. So I re-drafted them to be as wide as the bottom of the pants and while I was at it I made them a little shorter. I tried on the pants and given my stature, a little shorter would fit me a bit better. They turned out well.
The only part I’m not thrilled about with these pants is the inner leg seam. I think this has to do more with the serger I used at work. It just doesn’t seam as soft as the serging I did at home. I think it’s partly due to the thread and partly due to the width of the stitch. It’s a narrow overlock and if I had done a wider one like I typically use at home it might not stick out as much and rub my leg. As it is, I still wear them a bunch. Since they’re made out of sweatshirt fabric, they’re nice and warm.
I’d make them again, probably with a stretchy fabric and maybe something a little trendier that I could use after workouts or dance rehearsals.
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