Hi Everyone… Wow, I feel like I’m dusting off an old friend. Last year, I started to post weekly to share what’s going on here and I fell off the wagon… hard! I’m going to give it another try. I like sharing what I’m working on, what I have planned and other fun. This post is inspired by a little annoying thing that happened in my online shop while I was busy teaching the August 3-Day Pants Fitting Workshop.
New Customer Experience in my Online Shop
I received several “FAILED” orders for 1″ Ban Roll in my online shop. They looked like they were from different customers… but the order itself was exactly the same. So I had my amazing Social Media Manager check into it for me. Apparently, all the failed orders were from the same IP address in Boston. To “tighten” things up in my shop, I’ve decided to eliminated the “Anonymous Order” option. So going forward, if you’d like to order something, you will need to create an account first. As a consumer with other small business websites, I know this adds more to the process of ordering, so I apologize in advance to everyone who is currently using the “buy anonymous option”. I’m hoping this will put an end to that funny business.
Here’s the class photo from the August Pants Fitting Workshop (a couple ladies are missing). They all deserve gold stars for all the hard work they put in to get their pants or jeans patterns to fit! I was really blown away by this group, they got so much more done than I thought possible.. a couple ladies started working on front pockets and constructing the front fly after fine-tuning the fit of their first pair of pants!
How to deal with excess ease on the back leg
One of the common fitting issues in this group was excess ease on the back leg. This can happen when your full hip is one size and your legs are another. Most pants patterns are drafted for a proportional figure. This means it’s assumed that if your full hip is one size, your legs will have a similar measurement and also fit into that size. In the case where you have more slender legs, it’s helpful to remove some of this excess ease before you start fitting. Let’s say your full hip is a size 14… and your legs are a size 10. The first step is to trace the size 14 pattern pieces. Then, you can get rid of some excess ease using the adjustment shared in this tutorial on my YT Channel.
Removing excess ease on the back leg is one of the “Body Specific” adjustments that you may need to customize the pattern pieces to your shape, making the fitting process much easier! Here’s the good news… This adjustment can easily be “undone” by letting out the side and or inseams if your back leg is too snug when you try on your fit muslin. You can also wait to see if you have excess ease if you’re not sure.
Removing excess ease on the back leg of the fit muslin
Here’s a photo of a back view of one of my students who needed to remove ease on the back leg after her fit muslin was sewn up. In this case, I could pleat out ease from the waist to the hem. If the waist and full hip was fitting properly and the excess ease started below crotch level, I would have pleated out fabric as shown in the tutorial above.
A first look at this pattern cut out of different pants fabric
After she finished fine-tuning the fit of her muslin and transferred all the adjustments to the pattern pieces, she cut out her first pair of pants. This is where it gets really interesting. The fabric I chose for the fit muslins for this class was a close plain woven polyester with a little mechanical stretch (less than 1″ for every 10″). It was very structural and did not have a soft drape. The fabric that she chose to cut out her first pair of pants had no stretch and was soft and drapy. In this back view photo, you can see how differently the pants hang from the waist. Even though we got rid of some ease within the pattern, you can see that she can still take in the back side seam a little bit to remove a little more ease. Why? Every fabric fits a little bit differently!
The Upcoming 3-Day, In-Person Pants Fitting Workshop on October 4-6
If you missed out on joining me for this workshop, there are a few open spots in the October 4-6 In-Person Pants (or Jeans) Fitting Workshop. If anyone has questions about attending an in-person workshop with me, please email me at jsterndesigns37@gmail.com. Thanks for reading… and I hope to continue with a new “What’s Up at J Stern Designs” next week! Jen
