Burda of the month: printed pants 10/2013#127A

I was reading Paola's blog recently where she was wondering whether she was too late to join the coloured pants trend with her lovely green pants (definitely not). But I was wondering the same thing because I had been thinking about making some floral pants for spring/summer, a trend that has been around for a while but after a bit of snoop shopping I figured they are still pretty much current. And besides the point of sewing for ourselves is to be able to make what we like, when we like without being dictated to by seasons or fashion designers!

This is quite out of my usual sewing zone - to be sewing pants first of all which I rarely ever do, and to be making a pair from a print fabric instead of a subdued solid colour. But the good thing about my Burda challenge is that everyone now and then I like to try something new and different to what I would usually sew and see what comes out.

So for my October Burda challenge (made during the actual month of October too!) I chose to make the slim fitting trousers 10/2013 #127A:

These are pretty simple pants, rather quick to make but as we all know it's the fitting that takes the most time and effort to get right. Being rather cavalier as usual, I chose not to make a muslin instead just doing some flat pattern measurements. Surprisingly it turned out pretty well (phew!). I wanted to make some slim fitting but slouchy summer pants so I didn't narrow the leg to match those worn by the model in the photograph. I cut out a size 38 to fit over my hips, and took in a little at the waist to stop the gaping that inevitably happens. The back view really shows off my pear shape in an unflattering way, but hey I'm all for truth in reporting around here!

There are some diagonal folds emanating from my saddle bag thighs downward to my knees, but apart from that the fit isn't too bad. What I really liked about this pattern is that it is sewn like men's pants - the centre back seam is done last after the waistband is attached to the pants in two pieces, which means you can take in the centre back seam to fit:

As you can see I did make the centre back seam a little deeper at the waist to get it to fit snugly. I also like that this pattern, like most Burda pants patterns uses an extended pocket piece that connects to zipper, which is a much neater way of doing things:

The fabric I used is a cotton/linen blend bought from Spotlight a few years ago. The fabric didn't wrinkle very much at all much to my surprise, but it did 'grow' a lot after wearing as I suspected it would. After a few hours it bagged out at the knees and the seat giving me the dreaded saggy butt look but I made the waistband facing from interfaced cotton poplin and put belt loops on the waistband so I could wear a belt and make sure they stayed at my waist. So since they didn't fall down I can live with a bit of sagginess - they are meant to be slouchy linen summer pants.

So overall, I'd say this pattern is pretty good (but I'm not all that experienced with pants pattern so I can't say definitively that it's any better than any other pants pattern). One thing I didn't like at all was their instructions for the fly zipper with shield. As much as I read and read those instructions, I just couldn't understand them at all so instead I used this very helpful tutorial with lots of pictures over at Grainline Studio. If I make these again though I would add fly extensions to the centre front of the pants when cutting out rather sewing on a fly extension - it's just a bit quicker and simpler to do it that way.

I took about 4cm off the length of the pants and still have a 5cm hem on these - clearly my legs aren't as long as the leggy models in the magazine that these patterns seem to be drafted for. I did hem them to wear with flats and not heels so they are a bit shorter:

I wanted to try wearing these pants with heels to see how they looked, but my mini-me decided to wear my heels around and copy my poses instead:

How scary that at 4 and half years of age she thinks that posing for photographs like this is normal!