July 18, 2017

A trouser experiment

Thank you for the nice comments on my previous post! Now that someone has brought it up, it would make a lot of sense that the combination of knitted and woven fabric is a reason why not many other people have made things like that dress. But take it from me: if you can make a simple t-shirt, you can certainly make a dress like that!

Now, on to the next thing. I kind of announced I would put two items in one post, but now I think I will save the second one for tomorrow.
A few weeks ago, while I was still working hard on all the end-of-year stuff that comes with teaching, I decided I wanted a simple, fun sewing project. Something kind of relaxing. And for some reason, I remembered Thai fisherman pants (I know I always insist on using the word trousers for trousers, not "pants" but in this case the idiom seems pretty much fixed on pants). 
I spent some time looking on Pinterest for inspiration pictures and pattern suggestions and I found a lot.

So, one Saturday morning, I used this very simple sketch as a guide and cut into some black linen from my stash. 
I went with a single layer top panel with flat-felled seams and a turn-over hem.

The end result wasn't bad but didn't quite look like these things do in most pictures.

At some point during sewing, I even wondered they might be too tight around the thighs, but they're not.

In fact, this strange shape actually allows a lot of room for movement.

This, just in case you are not familiar with this phenomenon of Thai fisherman pant, is that strange shape:



You've got the completely flat shape of a huge pair of trousers (without shaping on the crotch seam, that is why they are flat) which is wrapped around the wearers body and tied with ties attached to the center back of the top panel. After tying, you fold over the top half of the top panel, covering the ties.

There are a few different options to construct the legs and I think this is one of the simplest. I made these pretty much the way the pattern tells you to (although I may have forgotten to add seam allowance on some straight seam somewhere). Based on the result, I wouldn't recommend doing that if you wear more than, about, a Burdastyle size 38. If you do, add some width and height and go from there, or use one of the many other tutorials floating around on the internet.
The beauty of this style should be that it is truly "free-size" and this version isn't really. It still makes for a nice pair of summer trousers for me though.
Tomorrow I will show you my version of one of those other tutorials.

1 comment:

  1. Those are really fun, I'm glad they ended up fitting--patterns like that can be surprisingly tricky. And the pants/ trousers thing is why we say the Brits and the Americans are two peoples divided by a common language!

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