Fancy Pants

Today I finished a pair of jeans that I made using Burda 12.2009.116. I have been wanting to make the Jalie jeans, but have had some trouble finding stretch denim that I like the weight and color of. On the other hand, I have had this dark (non-stretch) denim in my stash for a while. I have enough yet to make the denim dress that I picked the pattern for in the previous post.

As for these, I have made these pants before, from khaki twill, but I thought that this would be a nice pattern to practice my topstitching on, given all the seams going in so many different directions:
This time I did not use the side-seam pockets, given that they gaped open and I just sewed them closed in the last pair. Instead, I used horizontal pockets in the seam between the yoke and the pant front:


Given the interesting seaming, I decided to topstitch using beige thread. To do this, I threaded my Singer 401 with two spools of thread, running both threads through the needle. I also used black thread in the bobbin, so make the topstitching "pop." The stitch length was set at 10 stitches per inch:


I did not use flat-felled seams, but just serged and pressed the seam to one side and then topstitched through the seam allowance. One of the reasons that I did not do any flat-felled seams was because of the intersection of so many seams, and that would have been too bulky for flat-felling. Also, the curved seams would have been difficult as well. But, the two rows of topstitching looks the same as if the seams were flat-felled. Here is the leg piece with all the topstitching done, laid out and ready to be joined:


When setting the zipper, it is important to make sure that the seams from the front yoke are lined up:


To reduce the bulk of the thick denim, I used cotton left over from a shirt I made for my husband for the inside of the waistband and the pocket bags:


Here are the finished pants from the front:


And from the back, you can see the curved yoke seam and also the split back leg. I decided not to do any topstitching to the crotch seam, because I figured there was enough attention being called to the rear end with the back leg seams:


The back leg piece actually curves around the side of the leg to the front, I also topstitched the hem with two rows of stitches:


All in all, I am fairly happy with the results and feel confident enough to embark on either the denim dress, or if I find some nice stretch denim, the Jalie jeans. Now, I just need to go bleach my hands to get rid of all the blue dye on them. Two pre-washes, and I still have blue hands!!