White summer pants ( sewing ) ...

I liked so much how the poppy print pants turned out that I just went all pants crazy and cut out 3 more pairs. I had to do it all again while everything was still fresh in my mind. This time around I took a lot of pictures while sewing and I can walk you through my process.This is how I learned most of what I know - watching what and how others sew so I want to give back by sharing my process.

Here is the link to the next post when I am wearing it.

Luckily I already have an amazing fitting pattern for myself but I think you can construct a pattern yourself  if you already have an old RTW pair of pants that fits you just right and you have the heart to cut the seam and trace their pattern. I just love high waistbands. After heaving a child I think my belly will never really by the same again ( sports and workouts are not for me ) . But with high waistbands I can keep it in place. I have drafted myself a pattern for this kind of waistband for a circular skirt and it worked really well for me and it was very easy. Here is how I did it:

Draw 2 parallel lines at the distance that you want with waistband height to be. Then another 2 at the same distance between them a little higher. Try a few curvy lines between the 1st blue and red lines and measure it's length ( if it is 1/4 of your waist length then you are good to go ). Do the lower curvy line as well trying to keep the distance between them even. Now you got your pattern. But this doesn't include seam allowances, so just add ones like the light green example. For the back pieces you just have to cut 2 of this on the fold. For the front part there will be some overlapping so you have to add some extra fabric for that. Cut 4 NOT on the fold. I never know in advance witch part goes where and what are the ones that goes under and should be longer so I just leave more fabric to all 4 pieces and I see in then end witch one I should trim.

Now that we I got the pattern all cut let's go sew it. This time I started working with the waistband. Since my fabric was pretty thin I decided to use interface on all the waistband pieces . Pin them and sew.

For the part that will be on the inside I did a satin bias tape finishing. It was not perfect attachment but it looked a lot better then regular serge.

I also worked for the belt support at this time. I remember that most instructions I read were saying to do this in the  end but I thought that this way the seams will be more discrete. I took some scraps and sew them into nice tapes, pin and then did a stitch close to the edge to keep them in place without pins.

I left the waistband for now. I start working on the legs doing the darts in the back :

This time I wanted to do a slit on the side so when joining the front and back part of the leg I started with the exterior seam so I have plenty of room to work on the details of my slit rather then doing the inner seam 1st.
 I used adhesive tape paper with heat transfer to keep it in place while sewing:

When I start working on this pants I wanted to do side pockets but the fabric is thin and  I didn't liked how those pockets will look under it so I settled for 2 fake laps on the back:

 

After this i closed the leg and joined them together. I am really pleased with how neat the join is :

Next the zipper. When I got to it I realized that I had every single color except white. I just didn't want to stop working on my pants because I know myself and it knew it will take me while to finish them if I stopped. So I just used a very light pink one instead . I hopped I didn't ruined the pants with it ( in reality is lighter pink that it shows in the pictures). There are so many steps in attaching the zipper that I think it is better to just watch a movie with it. What I did different was to leave some extra fabric where the zipper should be and save me the pain of attaching one of the extra pieces. I hope that pictures can clear this up:

One of the things I love most about sewing is that I can add some personal touch to each item that will make it quite unique and mine. My pants were almost done and no such detail yet so I found some really really nice lace tape that matched the fabric perfectly and used it to decorate the lower hem. I just love the hem like this.

 I also had some unexpected problems here in the end. The pants were to long for the king of gathered closing I going for and I had to shorten them and lose from the slit charm that I was going for :(. I also didn't had enough fabric left to do the overlapping hem that I initially wanted so I had to get creative and did some hidden rubber band closing. I really liked it in the end and it seem to keep the hem in place and like not having to do buttons when pulling the pants on.

I hopped I didn't bored you to much and feel free to give me feedback so I can improve it.

Here is the link to the post when I am wearing it.