StyleArc – Claudia pants

Work deadlines kept me from blogging the past few weeks. Too many hours at the computer already to do more than read the occasional blog post or review from others.
An important deadline was on January 31 and I must say I felt enormously relieved after the deadline was met, my customer was happy and I had a work-free weekend ahead of me.

On Friday night I started (and almost finished) StyleArc’s Claudia pants, intended for a woven stretch fabric.  Having read a lot of positive reviews on the fit of their pants patterns, have a few in my stash but never got round to making them, this was the moment to make this pattern, being too tired to do anything requiring more mental attention. I also need a few basic bottom garments. It’s been ages since I made pants.

The review on Pattern Review is here.

The fabric came from my stash and has a little bit of stretch, not a lot. In the photos below you will see these pants as I will never wear them. They are intended (for me) to be worn with a longer top. For review purposes these are better I think.

A few  wrinkles show in the back, they are different each time and result from the way I stand mainly. Also I’m a little tired of fitting and perhaps over-fitting. I do realize these are stretch pants, there is also the issue of ease of wearing etc. and compared to rtw these are so much better that I can live with it.

What did I change to this pattern? Almost nothing! I did take in an extra centimeter from the front seam at the waist and made one of the back darts a bit deeper. Other than that no changes. Which is better than any other pattern I’ve sewn before. To be sure I added extra width at hip height, but took that off again.

On the inside I serged the waistband on the side as well instead of folding it, reducing the bulk that way.

The top of the darts were trimmed for the same reason.

And the waistband edgestitched before turning and topstitching.

This is an easy pattern to make. StyleArc placed it in the category Medium/Challenging. I can’t see what is challenging about this pattern. Is an invisible zip challenging?

The instructions are a step by step description with a few drawings to clarify. If you’ve average sewing experience you won’t need these instructions, but there is one little thing that might confuse beginners: the drawing below suggests the side seams to be sewn completely, but you have to keep the left side open for the zipper. The written instructions are correct, the drawing isn’t. Very minor detail, but as only beginner sewers will probably use the instructions, the drawings should be correct.

I’ve worn these pants today and they are very, very comfortable. I’ll be sewing one or two more this week! It’s also easy to omit the front seam if you don’t want that. It’s only joining the two pattern pieces at the seam line. For me, after my little change in the waist, that will mean a dart at the front, which I don’t mind.

It’s a very good pattern and I’m definitely one of StyleArc’s fans by now. I wore my Marni and Marie jackets a few times in the past three weeks, this one is a success too.

There’s more to catch up to: Barb pants and the skirt from the fabric I’ve shown in my previous post. To be continued…