Planning new jeans

I won't rattle on about the closet-cleanout in every post, really, I promise…
But… having done that has made me more aware of my actual wardrobe needs and wants. While I always dream about spectacular dresses and jumpsuits, it has become clear to me that other things require my attention first.

I've been thinking about experimenting with new jeans styles occasionally. Usually just after inspecting my stash and finding several lengths of perfectly fine denim stored away there. However, with such a big pile of trousers filling up the closet, why bother? Yes, I noticed I was always wearing the same things from that pile, but still… 
Now, a lot of that pile is gone and I'm well aware of being not entirely pleased with one of the remaining pairs of trousers and kind of over the look of two other ones (which are exactly the same. Boot cut in black twill. Which has been a bit of a uniform of mine for about half my life now… No wonder I'm over it!)

I've never been a real jeans-kind-of-girl but this calls for new jeans. And with my new sloper finished, there's nothing stopping me from whipping up something good.
I'm starting out with some old ideas:

I've kept this page from Volkskrant magazine's (the weekend magazine of the newspaper I read. The name of which translates as 'the people's paper' but it has nothing to do with the Chinese newspaper with the same name…) spring 2013 fashion special.

It's a pair of jeans all right. But it's neither tight nor low-rise, not decorated with wild stitching nor with splotches of bleach. They're kind of formal yet cool. This outfit was by Balmain, which is a bit surprising because that label has mostly been bringing us rock-chick looks for a few years now. 
I would really like a pair of jeans like that even though I don't think I would pair mine with a denim crop-top. And I think I have the perfect dark blue thin and relatively soft denim in my stash.

More about that later though.
I decided to start on another old(ish) idea first.

I've made this sketch a couple of months ago. It should be part 'baggy jeans' (without hanging low), part 19th century-style trousers and it should involve an experiment with the angle and curve of the crotchline. And I've always envisaged these in black jeans.
Today, I've been drafting the pattern. Center front and back have been changed in such a way that, if the finished garment were laid down flat on the table, the legs wouldn't point straight down but they'd be at a bit of an angle. It 's hard to explain but I'll show you later. Something similar sometimes featured in the harem/zouave pants craze from a few years ago.
The black denim from my stash was a bit heavier than I had thought but I went ahead anyway and cut this thing. It's so good to finally be working on a real new project!
Pattern or fabric or the combination of the two can still make it fail horribly but I'm not worried, I'm just happy to get back in the swing of things...