Before we started the shirt I finished my other project in draping class, a pair of very wide trousers in a custom fit for me. I have lately seen a lot of ultra wide trousers in street style photos and absolutely adore the woolen ones. I showed my teacher this moodboard before we started creating:
My favorite is the one far right, with a polo. My teacher is super talented and thought that I should do a pair of trousers in wool, without darts on them. These are darts, for those who don’t speak sewing and in wool you can achieve them with a hot iron and wet cloth. (Amazing! I just love wool.)
So we started out by adjusting our trousers block, a very basic pattern of trousers. I took my measurements and added the extra centimeters equally on each side and on the darts on the pattern.
Here you can see my adjusting lines, adding the width of the leg to the basic pattern. You better keep track of which line is which 🙂
On the construction, which you first make in paper, I had to keep the darts. The toile fabric (cotton muslin) does not allow shrinking darts, so to be able to check the fit I had to keep them for now.
When you’re done with the construction, you deserve a food break (Usually plenty breaks…)
I then cut out the construction in muslin and started sewing my toile together.
This was the result. After a little tinkering with the center front/crotch curve I had a green light to start with my trousers in real fabric. I chose a nice melange wool, bought 3 meters for 40€ at one of the very many fabric shops at Sacre Coeur. I practiced the art of shrinking the wool with heat and water first.
You mark the area you want to shrink, sew a thread through and then pull to desired length.
Iron it on a special rounded iron board, with a damp cloth over (you have to be careful to not burn the fabric).
And this is the result of the ironing. Quite cool huh!
After that, I lined my fabric and sewed it all together (and more than one time yelled at the sewing machine), and after a lot of hours spent on this project I could finally test my result:
Woop! The feeling of putting on a pair of trousers you custom made for yourself, with a special haute couture technique (called resorbé in French) and it actually fits like a glove, is very nice!!
I just realize I forgot taking a pic on the back, where the technique of reducing the fabric is even more obvious but I’ll do that some other time. When seeing the pics I’m thinking about changing the bottom hem just a little, add another centimeter to the length. What do you think of my pair of trousers? 😀