#sewing powers

So this started when I randomly decided I should make a hoodie, because I don't have one. I've been rummaging over youtube videos of 'how to sew a hoodie' when I saw something incredible; a mermaid. I zoned out completely, my brain chanting 'oh my god, a real mermaid' as she was explaining something on the screen. When I came to, it hit me that what I was watching was her explaining how to measure yourself, and how to make a hoodie that fits your exact measurements. I stumbled on a piece of gold.

Prior to this, I thought the knowledge of sewing clothes to your exact measurements was something you could only gain if you went to a sewing school, or you got to be an apprentice to a master seamstress, I didn't think you could just catch it on youtube! Fascinated, I looked into instructions for pants as well, and I found that too! This is where my plans changed, and instead of making a hoodie, I decided I needed a new pair of jeans.

I've never taken sewing very seriously, but if I was going to make my own clothing for the rest of my life, it made sense to learn how to make them to measure! I confusedly measured myself and wrote everything down, and then started following instructions to make my first pattern.

I rummaged through my fabric supplies (clothing someone gifted to me because they were old or unwanted) and found these jeans! I know these got dumped on me because nobody could possibly wear them, the waist on them is as wide as my neck. And the leg holes are enormous. I checked with my pattern and realized I could actually cut out the entire pattern from the leg material because there was so much. Even though the design is so bad, these are 100% cotton, so the material is great. This is what I'm making the jeans from.

When I was making the pattern, I only measured the crotch area and assumed the lest of the leg can be made wider, so my first version of the jeans looked horiffic, and I just made a disgusted face and didn't take a picture. I had to modify the pattern to actually include the correct size for knees and ankles.

The first important thing I made for these were enormous front pockets; I watched a few videos hoping to learn by osmosis, but ultimately just grabbed a different pair of jeans to see how that's put together, and mimicked it. It turned out well! My first time adding the back pockets I accidentally added them to the wrong side of the jeans, then tried to assemble the jeans like that, turned out it looked awful, so I undid the jeans and started over. I would go on to undo and reassemble the jeans 3 times, for various reasons. Here is the jeans assembly:

They look like a pair of pants now! I then had to figure out how to add the zipper, which once again, I tried to learn by osmosis but ultimately figured out by copying another pair of jeans. Now I needed to add the waistband, and at this point I have almost no fabric left so I decided to just grab the original one and extend it. Look how short it is compared to the jeans now!! This feels criminal.

I didn't have any fancy way to extend it so I just cut it and sewed on some extra fabric. This is gonna hide under a shirt anyway. After extending the waistband I sewed it on, only to realize it's still slightly too tight, and I wasn't gonna tolerate that, so I had to,, take it off, extend it a bit more, put it back on. This is all done by hand sewing, so I was really in the trenches. At that point I decided I was Done and wore them to work immediately, only to notice they are slightly sagging down, because the waistband was slightly too wide now, and if I crouched it would get too low on my back. When I got home, I added more fabric to the back and cinched that part so they would hold on my back properly.

(they look whiter in the light but they are blue-gray)