Blue Jeans: Version Two

Today I finished up a second version of the Jalie stretch jeans from the previous post. If you recall, that version was overly tight through the thigh:


You can see the horizontal pulls across the back of the leg because the leg is too narrow through the thigh. I found the jeans to be otherwise flattering, however, so I wanted to make these work.

To improve the fit, I needed to do two things:

1. Widen the back leg and
2. Raise the rear waist band to cover the bottom
   

To widen the back leg, I made an alteration to the back pattern piece in the same way that I would do a large bicep alteration (see this link for a diagram). Once that alteration was made, I then made a wedge alteration to the back of the pant (see page 37 of the same text linked above). One issue that I did have to consider is that if I added a wedge that was too large, it would make the yoke seam horizontal rather than the "vee" shape that it is supposed to make. To keep that vee-shape in the back, I added a small wedge to the back pant pattern piece and a second small wedge to the yoke itself.

Here is the new version:


You can see how close to horizontal that yoke seam is due to the addition of the wedge to the back pattern piece. I may work on redrafting where the yoke and back meet to make that more vee-shaped.

And from the front:


And the side:


You can see in the side view that the side seam does tilt to the back a bit just under the waistline. This should be fairly simple to fix. The major issues, the too-tight legs and the panties peeking out of the waist line, have been fixed in this version.

This version reveals that there are a few small issues that I could fix if I wanted to. Among them:

1. Making the yoke seam more vee-shaped as opposed to horizontal
2. Transferring some of the width of the front pattern piece to the back to keep that seam from swooping backwards on the hip
3. Possibly replacing the straight waistband with a contoured waistband, although that would do away with the super-simple sewing of the flat waistband.
   

Overall, I am very happy with the simple alterations that I was able to make to the jean, which resulted in a very comfortable and flattering pant.

While the pattern is drafted to be very close-fitting and slim, I think that with these small alterations they can work well for plus-sizes as well.