Last week I was looking at these lovely yoga pants from Gossypium, and lamenting that I didn’t have £35 to spend on a pair of trousers just at the moment.
Today I was finally able to reach into my pattern stash at the back of the Shed (which still has a great deal of kitchen piled up in front of it, as we gradually move everything back indoors) and pulled out Vogue 8396. I must have been hanging on to this pattern for a long while, as it’s now out of print, but version C has that fold-over waist that I was looking for.
I unfolded all the pieces and pulled out the ones I’d need to make the trousers in view C. Then I tried to figure out which size to cut. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my psychic powers out with me today, which means that I still don’t know.
The trouble with dressmaking is that the measurements given on the pattern envelope are almost never the same as the finished measurements of the garment that you’re making. That’s because each pattern has a certain amount of “ease” built in, to make sure that you can still breathe and eat and sit down and move around once your garment’s finished. So the pattern pieces usually tell you the actual measurements of the finished garment.
Except that this one doesn’t.
Given that they’re close-fitting trousers, made from stretchy fabric, it would be reasonable to assume that there isn’t any ease – that the measurements given on the envelope are the ones you’ll end up with. But then again, stretch garments (especially leggings) tend to have negative ease, so that they stretch when you put them on. That’s how they stay up.
Normally I’d cut out the pattern, pin it together and carefully try it on – but for a stretch garment that doesn’t really work. I can’t afford to waste either the time or the fabric to make a pair of trousers that don’t actually fit, so I guess I need to iron the pattern pieces, measure them carefully, subtract the seam allowances, and try to work it out that way.
Or, given that the Gossypium ones are now reduced to half price, I might just give in and buy a pair!