The Right Trousers

No Wensleydale shall enter into the lists.

Trousers have rarely been my friend. When I was a child I was so skinny my mother bought me boys' slim ones and they were still too big. When I became a young woman, the gap in the back was, and remains, the problem - the extreme waist to hip ratio.

So I decided that for work, when I need trousers sometimes, I would make my own. I chose an old pattern - Folkwear 218 (Palm Beach Pants, as it used to be, now Hollywood Pants, #250.) I have made the culottes (now tap pants in the re-issue) but never the trousers or knickerbockers. The trousers are a nice straight cut, falling from the hip with no pleats, and a side zip. I figured, wide legged trousers, perfect for all my figure problems - the waist-hip thing, sway back, knock knees. What fun!

Even so, I fiddled for a fortnight with the muslin, trying to get that extreme waist to hip ratio thing corrected. Even had the off-the-cuff (so to speak) consult of my friend's new hubby, who just happened to have studied design. It finally came down to pivoting the huge immense darts into the side seam and making one smallish dart in the side fronts. The problem with this is that one doesn't want the side curve to be extreme. But unless you want to emphasise the difference by two or even three darts, that's your best shot.

Now, with all the bugs worked out in the muslin, I am on to cutting the fashion fabrics - one wool gabardine and one linen. Lined. With self-bound underlining. Swish. Worthy of my mother.

For instructions on how to do underlining (on a jacket, but the principles are the same) see

Line and Underline in One Step from Threads magazine.

Pictures in the next installment