Miscellaneous Thoughts

I'm working on the altered TNT capris and hope to have them finished later tonight. In the meantime, I'm taking a little break and thought I'd share some photos and ramblings about the process.

The white pattern is my TNT. The brown tissue is the CC "jeans." Look at that front crotch curve. It's huge. And look at how far downward it slopes. Jeans don't look like that.



If they do, you end up with socks in the crotch, like this (which really isn't showing you how truly bad it is because I have them pulled up really high):



Here's the CC back pocket, over mine. Mine has 1/2" seam allowances, the CC has 5/8" so there's even more of a difference than first seems. Ladies with large patooties are not flattered by skinny little pockets on their backsides. It only points out how much "space" there is on either side of the skinny pocket. All pattern pieces need to be in scale to body wearing them — it's not one-size-fits-all.



Here's the back yoke piece. Odd, isn't it? On pants with a back yoke, you wouldn't just add to the center/top of the yoke like this to get extra length to cover a larger backside. When drafting a pattern, you would add the extra length to a typical darted pants block and then create the yoke so you can have jeans that look like everyone else's, instead of this weirdness. You'd alter an existing pattern the same way too (below the yoke).



So after my fuming about this stupid pattern wore off, I altered my TNT for more tummy room, which is the only place I needed to adjust it. But instead of tracing off the whole front pattern, I just traced the upper section and attached it to the TNT. This gives me a "fold down" piece which keeps the original pattern intact, but incorporates the new spread for tummy room. The spread also keeps the sideseams intact so they still match the back in shape/length. Genius, eh? Nah, it's just the cheap and easy way. ;-)





Here's the "herd" in action. I can't tell you how absolutely luxurious it is to have a dedicated topstitching machine - the Viking 6010. It's as good as the dedicated coverstitch machine peeking out on the right. Once I get a new longer table/countertop so I can spread out more, it will be even more decadent. Oh, and $23 is what I ended up paying for this machine after the seller compensated for the shipping damage. That's almost free!

Can't you see the family resemblance with her next to her big sisters? ;-)



Here's a couple samples of the real topstitching in action (vs. the samples I showed earlier).





Now back to the sewing room!