My Clover pants

A-ha, a finished garment, finally! Clover pants by Colette Patterns.

You know, this pattern required a lot of patience! A L-O-T! There is something going on with the crotch, and I have to stand in a very stiff pose to have no whiskers, wrinkles, pulls or whatever.

The original pattern suggests using medium weight fabrics with some stretch. I had a stretch wool tweed. The fabric has some shine, but by far not so much as on this image, I still need to work on my images (even though this was taken by Mr. Frabjous, ahem...)

The instructions are easy to follow, although I did a few things differently. Let me explain one by one.

You may remember from another post on Clover pants, that I serged side seams with  fine silk thread. However, I just could not do the same on the crotch and pockets. Well, the problem was I underlined the pants with stretch silk charmeuse, and used the same charmeuse to make pockets. Well, serging just went all over the place with the slippery stretchy silk, so at the end I just hand overcast it, and it looks quite decent without living an imprint on the outside. I must add, that at the end it took me less time to hand overcast than to go though all that trouble with serging. But that's me again :-)

Here are the pockets, I love them, but they are hardly functional. In fact, I always have to push pocket lining down when I put on the pants.

One piece of advice, though! Don't you ever put your hand in this pocket in public: it looks weird, especially, if the pocket is not visibly identifiable as such... you got my point, right? here, oh horror, when I saw it on this pic....

I am really ashamed! but, enough of this...  Another thing I did, was faced waistband, which I did following Claire Shaeffer instructions from her Couture Sewing Techniques, or, even more detailed, her article in Threads (Facing Finesse: A couture waistband thins even the thickest fabrics, August/September 1990, from Threads Archive DVD).

How did  I do with my couture learning ? I think, well. So, to summarize, here are some couture techniques I used:

• underlining (right decision, because tweed is very! scratchy)
• hand-overcast all but side seams
• faced waistband

I like the result a lot, but  before I use it again I will definitely have to work more on the crotch fit!

So, here is my additional New Year's resolution: create the basic pant block using personal measurements! It will take some time, but I am determined to get it right!

What is your experience with pants? Do you get the fit right? Any recommendations?