While the jacket was certainly the center piece of the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em inspired look that I did for the 2024 Her Universe Fashion Show, you can’t have a pant suit without, well, pants. Above, this picture was taken backstage which is why the lighting is funky. And I’m holding the boxing champion belt that Raeven made (I did the emblem in the center) that we used for our walk out.
I’ve never drafted a pants sloper and, honestly, I don’t make pants that often beyond joggers or leggings, so I was definitely going with a pattern for these. When looking for a pattern, there were several factors my co-winner and blue robot Raeven and I kept in consideration:
- It needed to be comfortable. We were going to wear this for many hours (I believe it ended up being close to 12) and sitting in them for a large portion of those while judging.
- We wanted a slim silhouette but not leggings.
- We wanted pockets for our cell phone (although we actually didn’t end up getting to take it with us which was actually super frustrating to miss so many good photo ops since we literally had the best seats in the house).
While going through my hoard of patterns as well as those on the Internet to find the right style, I remembered the Charm Patterns Audrey Cigarette Pants. These are a Patreon pattern, but I’ve been one of Gretie’s Patreon members since day one, so I have all the patterns. They weren’t actually on my to-sew list because, again, I don’t really do pants for “fun,” but when I gave them a second look, I realized they would totally work. They were the right silhouette and looked polished, they had pockets, and they were made from knit.
Thus I embarked on making 2 muslins. Pardon the late night terrible photos. The first was out of stretch taffeta from Califabrics. The taffeta itself was nice, but I don’t think it’s right for this pattern. I wish I had another use for it because they had some great colors! It didn’t have quite the stretch I needed particularly in the vertical direction, but I was still able to use this muslin to work out some issues.
The arrows are because I sent this to a chat group with my sewing friends to get help with the issues although I ended up researching and doing most of the adjustments myself. Here were the biggies:
- Swayback adjustment (yellow). I needed to take out almost an inch at the center graded to nothing at the sides.
- Extra fabric under the butt (green). This was the only one I couldn’t really figure out. You need a little give here so that the pants can move when you sit down. And since the fabric had very little vertical stretch, I needed to “gain” fabric somehow when I sat down. So I never ended up really fixing this one. I believe it can be fixed with the some adjustments near the thighs at the crotch though. But I have to be very careful not to overfit as that’s my tendency.
- Crotch folds (red). I fixed this one by adjusting the curve of the crotch through there.
- Side tuck (blue). This was because I had extra space/fabric which was causing the front tummy panel to pull more than the back. I took it in about 1 inch on both sides and it very much improved the look. So I ended up going down a size (I measure at a 6, but went down to a 4), especially since I knew my actual fabric would be stretchier.
The other adjustment that I thought I needed to make — but shouldn’t have — was decreasing the total vertical crotch height on both front and back by an inch. The waist seemed really high, but it was actually at my natural waist with the taffeta and you’ll see when I moved it down it went to where I typically where my pants which is around my belly button . . . about an inch below my real waist. Sigh.
But at least I could see that the look was coming together! On to muslin 2 . . .
This muslin was made from some Robert Kaufman ponte. It’s got little dots on it and is quite nice. This muslin still wasn’t quite perfect. But much closer!
The swayback adjustment worked great. The smaller size fit much better. I still had a slight tuck on the side and a little bit of folds under the butt, but not enough to bother me. However, I realized when I tucked my shirt in that I looked thicker than I would like. And this is because I shortened the crotch height which brought the waistband down an inch so it was no longer at my natural waist, the thinnest part of my body. Additionally since the waistband is supposed to go around the waist, it was snugger at an inch lower than I would have liked and thus also less comfortable.
I’d still like to turn these into a wearable pair of pants. I have some extra fabric so I might redo the waistband on these and see if I can get them comfortable.
But at this point I felt ready to jump into the fashion fabric. The only change I was going to make from these was adding that inch in the crotch length back in. The fashion fabric was also about twice as stretchy as the Ponte so it was also going to be much more forgiving.
The pants went together as expected. There were 2 changes I made from the directions.
First was that I did the pocket bags slightly differently. In the instructions the entire pocket bag is made out of fashion fabric and attached to the tummy panel which is out of power net. I was concerned about seeing the pocket bag through the front of the pants (a pet peeve of mine), so I modified the pocket bag to be fashion fabric on top and power net on the bottom which is thinner and less likely to be seen. It worked pretty well! I just cut the upper corner, overlayed it and zigzagged around the bottom edge of the fashion fabric. So technically there are 2 layers under the top corners. After that I treated it like the normal pocket piece.
The second change was how I did the waistband, but I probably didn’t need to in hindsight. After my second muslin, I was worried about the waistband being too tight. So I floated the elastic in the casing, rather than sewing it down the way Charm has you do it. The way they have you do it is actually a pretty neat way to get a clean finish. Weirdly I think my elastic actually ended up being shorter. But maybe because it didn’t have the stitching on the top? Not sure. On my next one I’ll go back to the recommended method.
Once the pants were done, it was time to embellish them. In the photo above (pre-hemming), I’m figuring out what the right size of rhinestone to use is. I’ll talk more about the actual rhinestones in the next post, but I tend to do embellishments last because I want to see how they look.
These are the options I sent to Raeven when we were figuring out the pattern. The last one (bottom right) is the most like the actual robots, but we actually went with the third one (bottom left). The top 2 are just too much. And I’m glad we did the simpler one both aesthetically and from a work perspective since I was sewing these guys on a day or two before we had to leave. Phew.
The bezels sew on, but for the pants, I glued them in place after measuring the distance to ensure it was even. Then I sewed them on. With all the movement we do with our legs and since it was stretch fabric, I was worried about them popping off or breaking stitches so I wanted the extra insurance there. But again I’ll talk more about that in the next post where I go into the 3D printing I did for this project.
I don’t have many photos of just the pants without the jacket which obscures the top (yeah, I know, I really gotta get better about photos), but I do have this one with Margaret where you can see them pretty well. Margaret did an amazing Wolverine + Barbie mashup. Not only is she talented, but she’s also just a wonderful human and I can’t wait to hang out with her again! Like I’ve said before, the people are one of the reasons this show is so incredible.
In summary, the Audrey Cigarette Pants are a great pattern. I plan to make them again out of the black version of this fabric as soon as I have a free moment because they truly are secret pajamas. And I’m always looking for clothes where I can look polished, but still be comfy!
