Category: Miriam

Finally!

Here I am finishing up the hem on Miriam’s pants, closely
supervised by Tabasco (those
little lines do disappear with pressing).

In all truth I should have begun these before this; there
was no reason for the delay other than my own mental peregrinations and over-contemplation
of the task at hand. All that remained
were simple repairs, putting in the waistband, and doing the hem. In fact, it probably took me longer to remove
the elastic that I had “basted” at the waist than it took me to put in the  Comfy Waistband from Pamela Isaacs Erny. I should have used that technique from the beginning. I had properly marked the waist at the first fitting;
fixing the completed waistband when I changed the darts would have been much
simpler than ripping out the overly complicated stitching I had used to begin
with. Live and learn.

The problem looked like this:

The pants came back from DSD with very few alterations. The right hip needed to be taken in where
there was an extra bulge of fabric below the hip curve (she has a high hip and
I misjudged the curve). The inexplicable
part consisted of two blue chalk marks
marking a “big fold” in the back, which I could not see for the life me, even
modeled on the intended recipient. I
could see the lines, I could see where they pointed (upper hip) and I could see
that the pants were perhaps a little snug across the upper hip in the back, but
I could not see any fold or wrinkle when she was standing in front of me. She and her DH insisted it was there, and I
do believe them.

I wondered if perhaps when I took up the excess at the side seam I eliminated
the problem but that seems unlikely. I
then wondered if perhaps when they pinned out the excess, not being very
proficient in the dressmaker’s art, they pinned a little tight and caused the wrinkle. I will never know. I didn’t see it but, just to be sure, I
released a little fabric from the upper hip in the right back just to be on the
safe side.

The test now will be to see if the pants fit now or have
been made worse by my fiddling.

I love the comfy waistband and I am sure DSD will too. It is so simple I am amazed that I have been
using more complicated and less attractive methods for years. This will also make it easy to alter if I did
indeed mess up the back with my manipulations, or if alterations are needed in
the future.

I did not like the look of machine hems on the texture of
this cotton knits and it looked kind of fiddly on pants that were otherwise
clean with on other exposed stitching so I decided to hand hem them. This has taken me two evenings and a little
extra since I like to put in three rows of tiny stitches as espoused by Cynthia
Guffey. I have about 4 inches to go and
then I need to take the pants and mark the alterations I made to the original
pattern so that I will hopefully know what I am doing to the next pair. I suppose that if I had planned on hand
hemming the pants I might have taken time and changed the thread on the serger
to be a darker shade of blue, although I kind of like the two rows of pale blue
serging at waist and hem.

When Miriam bought a pair of black slinky pants on sale at Chico’s I initially thought “no problem”.  After all, the kind of double needle hem that came on the pants is an easy thing to sew, how hard could it be to shorten the pants?  Hard no.  Time consuming yes.

Initially I thought the pants looked so good on Miriam that I would willingly run out and buy her more whenever they came on sale and shorten them for her, now that I know the inseam length.  That was before I realized that I had to take the existing hem out before shortening the pants.  Obvious I know.  But I’ve been known to walk right on past the obvious without even noticing.

The first time I tried to pick out the tiny black stitches from the ribbed black slinky fabric I thought my head was going to explode and my eyes were going to burst out of my head like cannonballs.  Of course I had a headache and sinus infection at the time.  Delay seemed the sanest option.

Even with a clear head, seeing the stitches was difficult.

They look pretty good here don’t they? By carefully
positioning the brightest (and hottest) halogen lamp in the house just so, the
stitches seemed quite evident. Piece of
cake I thought…

until I turned that edge up and tried to actually see the
individual stitches hidden in that cushy slinky fabric. Believe me, I saw no more than you do in the
above photo. There is a vague shadow of
a stitch across the blade.

 Talk about tedious and time consuming work…2 hours later the
old hems were out.

 That accomplished, it only took about 10 minutes to sew the
new hems. I shall subject you to the
boring hem shot:

I realize now of course that making slinky pants would take
no more time, and probably less, than ripping out that hem.  The construction of these is quite
simple. I traced the pants to make a
basic pattern before I shipped them down to Tennessee.