Clearly I need to work on my photographic technique. But let's get down to business.
It’s about time I finished these things! I made these months ago and they’ve been sitting around waiting for a hem, which is pretty sad considering I put the rest of the pants together in one day. I guess I wasn’t as crazy about them as I wanted to be. I finally did the hem last night. These were made from a crisp linen that looks a bit like denim. I underlined them with silk organza and did my usual contrasting zipper. They really do add the pounds, don’t they?
These offer fly-front styling with drawstring comfort (the drawstring has elastic in the back) and this is about the fourth time I’ve made this pattern. The first time, I made them in my size out of a nice drapey green linen (as suggested) and they were so big that I could put them on and take them off without undoing the drawstring, the button, or the zipper! (C’mon – who’s going to make a muslin for loose, drawstring pants?) I had some ugly, why-the-hell-did-I-buy-this? dark salmon-colored linen laying around so I made them again about a half-size smaller. This time I had to at least undo the drawstring. Then I made them in a flimsy linen with silk organza underlining a full size smaller. Success!
It’s a good thing I’ve made a lot of pants in my life because these come with the absolute worst instructions I have ever seen, bar none. I would have fired the person who wrote and illustrated them along with the printer who couldn’t seem to print the envelope without the text bleeding off into oblivion. A beginner would get totally lost in these instructions. It’s like someone dictated them over the phone to someone who doesn’t sew. And there aren’t any useful notches and the crotch points don’t match up properly. I had to redraw that part before cutting them out. The drawings for how to do the fly are the size of a postage stamp. I’m not kidding, man. A postage stamp! If I still had them, I’d show you. I could draw these instructions out on a paper napkin in a bar after a couple of margaritas and do better than Hot Patterns did! Okay, I’m done.
Some people like Hot Patterns because they’re printed on heavy paper. HEAVY paper. I had to use soup cans as pattern weights to cut them out because I am not spending almost seventeen bucks, plus shipping, to trace a pattern. I’ve had tissue patterns I’ve used a jillion times and they’re still good. Don’t get me started.
In order to torture myself further, I did buy another Hot Patterns jeans-style pattern because the reviews on PatternReview.com were good and I liked the style. So stay tuned for those one of these days. But this is probably it for me and Hot Patterns.
No comments:
Post a Comment