Finished: Thread Theory Jedediah Jeans
So, I promised my boyfriend a pair of jeans-ish trousers last autumn, and I finally finished them a little while ago! Since the trousers are black and he hates having his picture taken even more than I do, you can’t see all that much on the photos, but oh well.
Pattern
They are the Thread Theory Jedediah Pants, in size 30. I made Variation 1, obviously.
Fabrics
The main fabric is a black heavy-weight cotton with a little (3%, if I remember correctly) elastane. My boyfriend chose this fabric because it isn’t just a plain black fabric but has subtle textural stripes. I used about 1.5m of the 150cm wide fabric, but a width of about 125cm would have been enough. That’s nowhere near as much as the pattern claims you need—but then this is the smallest size and I played around with the cutting layout and cut everything on a single layer.
For the pocket bags, fly facing and zip shield, I used grey cotton pocketing.
I bound the seams in bright orange cotton voile.
The fabrics were all from Komolka.
Design adjustments
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The original leg width was slimmer than my boyfriend cared for, so I changed that. I basically just measured the hem width of a pair of jeans he likes and then drew parallel lines to the grain line on both the front and back leg pieces to make the legs straight instead of tapered.
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I drafted separate pattern pieces for the fly facing and zip shield and adjusted the front leg piece so I could construct the fly like the one on the Sewaholic Thurlow Trousers. I tried the Thread Theory method on the (pre-blog) pair of shorts I made for him last summer and I really rather prefer the Thurlow way of doing things.
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I left the suggested stitching lines off the back pockets (again). I stitched the right pocket on with red thread to make up for the lack of detail, though. Ha! And I hand-cranked the wheel around the whole pocket, twice, in order to get the stitching as straight and even as possible.
Fit adjustments
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I took the centre back of the yoke in by 1.5cm at the top, tapered to nothing at the bottom of the piece. Seems like my boyfriend’s behind is slimmer than the pattern is drafted for.
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Initially, I was going to shorten the legs by about 3cm. I went so far as to adjust the pattern pieces accordingly. And then I panicked because what if I had measured my boyfriend and his favourite jeans incorrectly and the legs would end up too short? So I added the 3cm back into the pattern pieces before cutting my fabric. And then I ended up sewing a 3cm hem, with another about 1.5cm turned under, and cutting almost 7cm off the length of the legs. So I guess there was really no need to panic and I’d better shorten the pattern quite a bit for the next pair…
What I struggled with
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The fly. I cut the fly facing and zip shield out of the pocketing fabric to reduce bulk, but the main fabric is heavy and the fly area is still rather bulky. I had to unpick the topstitching a few times before I was reasonably happy with it.
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The underlap of the waistband. The overlap is perfectly rectangular, the underlap … isn’t quite that neat. I made a stupid mistake there and had to unpick and redo it after grading/trimming the seam allowances, so I’m rather glad that I managed to sew it together again at all.
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Not starting five new projects while working on these. That’s actually what I struggled with the most, I think. Trousers require a lot more patience than I naturally have.
Helpful links
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LLadybird: Thurlow Sew-Along: Sewing the Fly Zipper – my favourite zip fly tutorial
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Notes from a Mad Housewife: Perfect corners on waistbands? Yes you can! – one of my very favourite tutorials on the Internet; this is so useful and I should really try to learn it by heart so that I won’t mess up every single waistband any more!