Encountering "Pants" Challenges and Changing Course....

I should've guessed that as soon as I began my "Fearless February" challenge I would have problems coming straight out of the gate. But that's to be expected since I and all of you who have joined this sew along (or others who are just tackling tougher projects all your own) have decided to push ourselves outside our comfort zone. Ok so I'm not detoured by this. I actually expected it. Anytime you do something new or tougher there will be challenges, right? Mind you, I'm super calm right now since I had an EPIC BOUT WITH FRUSTRATION on last night. Fortunately I didn't trash my sewing room or throw anything. Came close though. Instead I took a prescription of chocolate chip cookies and got a good nights rest  LOL!!!! It worked like a charm because today I'm back to my same ole' optimistic self (wink).

So it's a new day and I've decided to take a whole new approach on the matter. So you wanna know what got me all wound up? Well yesterday I revisited Jalie 2909. I've made it twice before. You can see my 1st pair here and 2nd pair here. Well I wanted to make it again but with improvements---mainly to get rid of the back leg wrinkles. For some reason I'm so ANNOYED with back leg wrinkles with pants I sew. Nevermind the fact that I have RTW pants that have them and that doesn't bother me. In contrast the pants I make, IMO, have to fit perfectly. My small hangup, huh? Well I did another muslin and fiddled and fiddled with it but just couldn't get it the way I wanted---I couldn't get rid of the wrinkles. To do so I think I would've had to go through the pains of narrowing the back pattern piece and probably re-angle the crotch. That would've been too much trial and error and an unwise use of my time considering all I'm trying to sew this month.

So after much deliberation I've decided to try another pattern. All pants aren't created equal anyway, huh? Most of us know that each pattern company uses it's own set of drafting blocks to create their pants patterns--which are based on their own standard measurements. Some fit better than others. Some fit with only a little tweaking while some would just require re-drafting to your measurements to fit. Since I've been experiencing continual problems with the back legs wrinkles with this pattern I've decided to just switch patterns. Hey it was Einstein who said....."Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". I'm not insane---obsessed with sewing, but not insane! LOL! Well although I've done lots of tweaking and can't get rid of the wrinkles I've realized it's time to let this one go.......

 I'm now working with  Burda 7192.  If this doesn't work then I have another Burda pant to try.

 Heck, if I don't have any good luck with that one then I'll just create a pattern from a RTW pair. Hopefully I won't have to go that far. I tend to like Burda patterns which have more of a European draft. I'm a little curvy but I am rather tall and thin so I don't need alot of the extra width that the big 4 pattern companies pants have. So I'll give this a try and see where it puts me. I will be fine, I know it. I've been studying fitting pants and have learned too much not to get this all figured out. At some point you have to stop taking things SO personal and work with what you know and use your resources wisely to resolve the problem. Again, if this doesn't work out then I could always use a good fitting RTW pants as a pattern. Either way, before the month's end I'm gonna have me some good fitting pants and a great TNT pattern to use. I can promise you that!!!! I'm preparing to cut my muslin of Burda 7192 and will keep you posted on the results.....

Anyhow, how's things going with you? Have you hit any challenges lately and had to change course? Did you resolve the problem? Do share!!!!