Ok kids, when I left off on these, I was wearing their basted selves for a day to see if I’d managed to improve the fit at all. Possibly the key thing I learned is that if I think about any piece of my clothing hard enough I can make myself very overwhelmed and irritated with it. Difficult, for carefully considered fitting.
I do also think the reduction in rise was an improvement, so I went ahead and redid my basting neater and stitched those wedges (horizontal eyelet darts?) in. 1.5″ at CF and 1″ at CB. The eagle eyed among you will note that sort of means I’ve left the hip points an inch higher than the rest of the waistband. No idea if that’s bad, or if my hips really take up that much room. I’ll see if it annoys me I guess (and will try to see that organically by not thinking about it). Now, I’m also wondering if I could use some extra length in the crotch, or if I graded down at the waist it would help, or if I made a smaller size with extra room for seat/hips/thighs. The obsessionist part of me would like to make 3 or 4 more pairs to test all that out and compare. But I’m not sewing to practice being a perfectionist (I do NOT need any practice), I’m sewing to practice saying ‘good enough is good enough’. So I called it good enough and moved on for now. I’ll need at least one more make/muslin until I’ll consider calling this pattern my first TNT though. Took an ice cream break to decompress.
Leg-fitting obsession aside, I turned my attention to finagling these into dungarees. I dug out my Hayley dungarees pattern pieces and lay the joggers patterns over them, lining up by the grainline and the crotch curve. The fronts made it pretty clear why I had so much fabric spare in the front rise/tummy of the Hayley’s – there’s essentially a big spare triangle of fabric there, as there’s no shaping through the waist and no waist suppression or anything like that. Not pictured, but the Hayley legs are also wider and shorter than the joggers, which explains why they came out so wide and short on me. Genius epiphanies over here folks.
Marking off 2″ (ruler width) off the top of the joggers to fill in the waistband, I traced out a piece for the top bib piece. Based on the size 14, cos the size 16 I made before was large. Then I tried tissue fitting that, by which I mean I recalled the 10 pages of Palmer-Pletsch I read 3 months ago, held it up against my center line, and said ‘hm’. Then I shaved off a wedge measuring 1″ at CF as it was giving me a very steep triangle in the front and I didn’t want to replicate the same issue I had before, and trimmed off about an inch at the side seam to bring the bottom edge length in line with the top edge length of the legs pattern piece. The Hayley’s were ROOMY and not designed for stretch knit, so I’m not worried about that lost room. I’ll cut the facing first so I can baste and be suspicious about that triangle in CF.
Then I traced off a back bib piece; there was no triangle or excess width to shave off here (suspicious again – why did the Hayley’s have so much room across the front?), but I did take a very slim concave curve off the bottom to match the convex curve of the tops of the joggers. Don’t know why really.
Cut the pieces on the fold from facing (stretch poly knit from the remnant bin, not beefy but not flimsy), notched the centre top and bottom in case it helps with matching later, realised my front width adjustment changed the side seam height and shaved 5/8″ off the front side curve. Sewed the facing side seams and basted to waistband to fit.
Back and sides are good. Front, I can see the need for some tummy room but I don’t think it needs to be so much so I took 3/4″ wedge off CF. I also think it’s too tall and slightly too wide so I took 2.5″ off the top and shaved down the side.
I think as dungarees I will want to wear the waistband slightly higher, so mental note to increase the elastic to 38″ or 38.5″. Then I slept on it (again).
Over the next couple days I extended the legs and put the cuffs on, cut and sewed the bib and straps and loops and front pocket. The straps and loops are faced with the same material the pocket is made from, a black faux suede half yard I had knocking about, used for stability because it has very little stretch.
Measurements: (31 3/4″ +5″ for extension) x 2 1/2″ straps, cut two of each fabric. 5″ x 1 1/2″ loops, cut two of each fabric.
Then I tried them on and wandered about a bit and found the top or sides were gaping a bit, with too much room in the chest. I thought about darting it out on the side or at the side seam, but ultimately thought it would be more hidden by the pocket, and was curious whether the top would benefit from losing some width anyway. I shot that last bit in the foot when I didn’t bother to remove and restitch the pocket and instead just put a big long dart in it with a ladder stitch.
This did actually perfectly fix the issue of the top gaping, and I could mirror this in the pattern by taking an inch off the top CF and tapering down. But I’m not convinced if that wouldn’t actually provide some unnecessary stomach articulation. So maybe I shouldn’t taper, and take out the 1″ out of the width all the way down the bib. Or consider messing about with the sides instead?
Fit notes to try on next set: an inch darted vertically out of the top of the front leg pattern pieces, tapering to nothing at the thigh (on a level just above the crotch curve rounds in); 1.5″ out of front rise and 1″ out of back; see if crotch needs lengthening. See if even more wants to come out of front rise, once those weird seams are out of the way. Maybe try a couple shorts pairs?
to the touch 