Plaid Pants

Some nice, warm, plaid pants.

As a follow up to the previous post about the cape cover, these are the pants worn for graduation in January. I’d been leafing through pattern magazines and found a pants style I really liked in Burda Style 12/2022 model 1. It’s a wide legged pant with a diagonal overlap waistband. The legs have vertical pressed creases. I chose to do a Burda Style pant because it seems like those crotches work much better for me than Simplicity or Knipmode crotches.

As I was using a nice thick black and white plaid fabric for the pants, getting it cut out involved some real head scratching. I wanted to make sure that the plaid lines matched along the side seams and inseam, but also pockets and closure flaps. Since the bit of fabric that I had wasn’t overly large, I ended up cutting on the cross grain. The pattern didn’t come with back pockets, but I substituted some in anyway. Once I had all the pieces cut, I set to sewing. This went fairly smoothly until the instructions for the closure flap. I still don’t know what they actually wanted me to do, but I’ve done something and it closes, so I’m calling it good. It also doesn’t entirely match plaid there, but I’ve done a good enough job so I don’t think it’s super noticeable.

The front pockets are pretty regular. I followed all the normal steps and made sure to match my plaid there for maximum style points. For the back pockets, I followed a tutorial by Sewing Divas for non-sagging pockets. This involves making an extra fold in the side of the pocket closest to the wearer. So far, it seems to work. There are single welt pockets, and they are going over a dart. This means that you’ll see some slight discrepancy in the width of the plaid above and below the welt. This was unavoidable and I tried my best. I still think they came out pretty well.

All the insides are finished with the serger, so no fraying expected. The pockets are nice and deep. The fabric is lovely and soft. The plaid matches where I want it and overall I’m very happy with these pants. Did I figure out after the fact that they look quite similar to my other black/white plaid pants? Yes, I did. Do I care? Also not. They did require a bit of alteration after I’d worn it to graduation because I’d hemmed it a little short. That’s been fixed now, so they go out and about with me quite regularly.