You say trousers, I say pants

Ok enough harping on by me about how none of my clothes fit my post baby body, I figured there were two things I could do about it: either lose the weight or sew some new clothes. Given that I have the means and materials (many, many materials) to sew some new clothes I took the easy option and made some new pants.

I don't often make pants because I'm really bad at it. Well I suppose I'm good at sewing pants, I'm just bad at making pants that fit me! Since I'm a pear shape with quite a large difference between my hip and waist measurements with some saddlebags thrown in for good measure, getting pants that skim over my hips but fit around the waist with any gaposis is actually difficult.

But I have found that Vogue 2907, an Alice + Oliver pattern is actually quite good for my body shape because they are hipsters and they have a centre back seam which allows for adjustment. Although I did make some adjustments to them because they are obscenely low waisted, so I raised the centre back by 5cm, grading down to 2cm at the sides and then blending down to the original waistline at the front. I also put two darts in the back and pinched the centre back seam of the waistband in at the top to get a nice snug fit around my waist and prevent the old 'plumbers crack' whenever I bend over or sit down!

I dug out some stretch polished cotton in a navy colour from the stash which sewed up beautifully and wears really well with minmal wrinkling. However I may have too smart for my own pants (ha ha pun intended) because these pants wear like jeans, they loosen up after a while and then they are a little too big! You just can't win sometimes.....

I also think that the fly zipper method used by this pattern is way too fiddly - it requires cutting out a seperate tab piece for the fly cover and sewing it on, instead of just cutting it out from the fabric and folding it back. Thank god for Sandra Betzina's video tutorial over on the Threads website about how to do a foolproof fly zipper which is the easiest way I've found to do a zipper and it always come out perfectly following her directions.

Jean - in answer to your question in the comments to my last post about the curtains in Anna's room, they are these ones from Ikea. They are a bit Orla Kiely inspired (ripped off?) and similar to the lovely fabric Erin used for her mini duro dress but a bit more bright and on a larger scale.