#yelling about garb

A kender knight errant giggles in the woods battle.

We often neglect character design in Dagorhir (or Belegarth, Amtgard, Darkon, and other LARP-y games where the focus is on fighting and we play one character for years on end). Rather than consciously asking “how can I convey who my character is through my physical appearance?” players often slide into wearing the same old tunics, pants, and accessories as everyone else. Much to my shame, I’ve been the fantasy character who dresses like a generi-Viking and then gets miffed when people ask “what are you supposed to be?” That changed when I took a theatre costume design class. The revelation that I could start with the ideas I wanted to convey (ie, “this character is colorful and eccentric-- how do we translate that into their clothes?”) vs individual items (”well, I already have this tunic-- I guess I’ll have to make it work for my kit, somehow”) changed how I think about character design. 

Thinking about character design let me deliberately and effectively overhall my entire aesthetic. I like my kit a lot more, now, and I think more Dagorhir players would feel the same way if they front-loaded their design process. 

If you’re having trouble figuring out your garb, then, consider designing your kit like you’re costuming a character for a stage or film production. 

Front-Load Your Character Design

I built my “Dragonlance kender” kit piece by random piece for years, and it never added up to a cohesive whole. Every fantasy character hates hearing “what are you?” or “what are you supposed to be?”, and I used to get that a lot.

 Now that I’m front-loading the design process people successfully “read” my kit a lot better. Strangers at the ren faire call me “Tasslehoff,” and new Dagorhir acquaintances burst out laughing and call “watch your pouches!” when they see me pass holding my hoopak, one of the clearest identifying “props” my character carries. Front-loading character design means thinking before you build or acquire pieces of kit, rather than trying to add items that don’t work with the “look” you’re trying to build.

Let’s think about this like we’re designing a stage production. One of the first things we should do is ask what you want to convey to the audience about the character. If this were a play, our audience would be the people putting their butts into our auditorium. Since Dag is live-action and immersive, your audience is your peers. Either way, the first time someone sees your kit, they should be able to make some inferences about you. How wealthy is this character? How much of a conformist are they? What time period or profession do you want to portray? If your design conveys nothing much (or worse, you have to break character to explain your kit or justify the absence of something that’s not there— ie,"I am an elf-- I was just cursed to lose my ears!”), then your design probably needs more thought. *

Case Study: Spud the Ranger

Dude looks like a ranger-- but WHY? HOW??

All of that is a little overwhelming, so let’s boil it down to one important question. Say an average player sees your kit for the first time. Without ever speaking to you (and, because they don’t care, without minutely examining every detail of your kit— the family crest etched onto your belt buckle is for your own satisfaction), a stranger should still be able to say, “aha, that guy is ______,” and be decently close. What do you want that blank to be? What do you need to include in your kit to make them say that?

Your "blank” could be something super obvious like “that character is a dwarf!” or “that character is an Uruk-Hai!” Successfully portrayed, not half-assed dwarves and successfully portrayed, not half-assed Uruk-Hai have really clear physical markers— they’re easy to “read,” provided you know that the beard/axe or fangs/White Hand are the identifying traits. My kender-kit falls into this category: as long as you’ve read Weiss and Hickman’s books, the topknot, hoopak, pouches, and furry vest say “kender” to you.

If your character is something that doesn’t come with easy “markers,” you might have to back off a little and go for something more general. You could pick a fantasy archetype and pick “that character is a bard,” or “that character is a raggedy peasant” or “that character is a knight,” or you could pick something even less concrete, like “that character is evil,” or “that character is more interested in having fun than conforming.” Any choice is valid-- the key is to define it to yourself and build your kit around it, rather than have your hodgepodge kit accidentally define it for you.

Let’s say we’re designing a character for Joe Newplayer. We’ll call Joe’s character Spud.

Joe Newplayer knows that it is gauche to corner his fellow players and tell them, in the third person, that Spud is a ranger who has some werewolf traits and has lived by hunting ever since he was exiled from his hometown, so Spud is going to try to convey this, instead, through costume (and later, through in-character roleplay). Good egg, Joe!

The very least Joe wants our audience to be able to say, of Spud, probably, is “aha, this dude spends a lot of time in the woods.” Going for “this dude is a hunter with a dark past” or “this dude has some weird canine traits” is a little harder, so that could be something to build up to (or, again, express through in-character roleplay).

What would help convey “dude who spends a lot of time in the woods”? Joe, having considered this a bit, might be tempted to start listing individual clothing items he wants to buy-- cloak! Hood! Some dope-ass boots!-- but I would encourage him to hold back. Rather than listing individual clothing items, start with some elements of design, like line, mass, color, texture and movement. Start by thinking about your design as a whole, not by over-focusing on individual pieces, and your costume will be more coherent, unique, and effective.

The Elements of Design

Do we want Spud to appear bulky or slender? A confident character might take up a lot of space, while one who hopes to fade into the background might be drawn more tightly in. Should Spud’s silhouette be shaggy, many-corner’d, or streamlined? What sort of textures are right for a dude who spends a lot of time in the woods? What sorts of colors? Should the materials Spud wears be light and floaty, heavy and stiff, or something in-between? WHY?

Hold off on the internal character reasons for any of the “whys” (ie, “I have this cloak because my mother made it, and she died, so I wear it to remember her”) and keep your focus tight to the audience. Joe might choose a silhouette that’s top-heavy with fur or leather shoulder armor and tapers down to through the lower legs, which very quietly suggests the lean lone wolf. Joe might chose muted, natural colors (which might say that the character wants to fade into the woods), or weirdly clashing or worn-out ones, which might say (though this is getting rather too subtle, but that’s his choice) that he doesn’t care about clothes or society’s expectations (or perhaps that he’s colorblind— canine attributes! ;) ) Joe might distress his fabrics suggest a character who’s down on his luck, or add lots of layers to imply that he carries everything he owns on his back because he doesn’t have a fixed address.

Remember that each choice you make will inform the physical experience of wearing the costume, too. A costume that the actor can’t move in is bad design! What does this character need to do in their clothes, and how do the elements of design you established above intersect with that? Do they need to physically carry all their worldly goods? Will they sleep or fight in this outfit? Will they need help donning their fancy clothes? No matter how independent and stand-offish your traveling female thief is, she’ll probably need help lacing up a back-fastening corset, so ponder the physical realities of the garments you might include, and ask if they fit with your big picture.

If this is overwhelming, pick one adjective and build your design around that, instead. Do you want people to see your character as, primarily, tough? Independent? Scatterbrained? Confident? Timid? Otherworldly? Brainstorm how your adjective could bleed out onto their clothing— not just by giving them individual props (this character is tough because he wears lots of knives!), but by thinking in terms, again, of audience impression (this character is tough because he wears hard textures and has no extra frills!). Grab a print-out croquis (try here) and do some drawings, like you’re making paper dolls. (It’s okay if they’re shitty. Mine are hilariously bad.) How can you make a character look confident, tough, timid, or otherworldly using shapes, colors, and textures, rather than building up from individual items?

For more insight on how to do this, consider reading more about costume design for film and stage. This is a good, quick crash-course in how to start thinking about character design. Give it a shot!

In Conclusion

Start from the ground up and ask what you want to convey to your “audience”— ie, your fellow fighters. The result will be more coherent than if you build stuff up, piece by piece.

Next time, I put my own neck on the chopping block as we look at how I built up my Ilsa character using some of these elements of design. ‘til then, tell me what YOU do to design your character! :)

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The linen “Bocksten-style” tunic is immensely popular in LARP, SCA, and Dagorhir. It’s as comfy as pajamas, but it has perfect range of motion. It looks good on everyone, but it’s easy to fit. It's simple to cut, but it uses fabric efficiently. It’s the ideal garment, and everyone should have one.

But a tunic is only as good as its seam finish. Weak seams mean your tunic won’t withstand running through the woods or fighting in a shield press, and raw edges mean your tunic might fall apart in the wash.

My garb shop, Tailored Tunics, specializes in making incredibly sturdy versions of this tunic in linen. Over five years (and hundreds of tunics), I’ve perfected my methods for making the perfect French seamed linen tunic, and now I want to pass my methods on to you! 

This tutorial is kind of endless, so a lot of things have been split off into separate tutorials. Before you start, please look at:

Linen FAQ: A Primer on Where to Buy it and What to Do With It. This will tell you how to get the best deal on linen fabric, and how to pre-wash it so it won’t shrink.

 Alric's Bocksten tunic tutorial, which will acquaint you with the general idea of the Bocksten tunic’s pattern,

My Measure and draft a better Bocksten tunic for my improvements on Alric’s pattern,

How (and why) to sew a French seam for garb so you’ll understand how to sew the basic seam, and

The Sew a Keyhole Neckline with a Facing tutorial. Facings are far stronger and neater than hems for tunic necklines, so I highly suggest you learn to use them. They’re really quite easy!

Sew the tunic: first steps

1. Prepare your pieces

Your tunic is made up of one torso panel, two sleeves, two underarm gussets, a neckline facing, two side gores, and two center gores. You’ll need about 2.5 yards of 60″ wide fabric for all this, depending on your size.

Your torso panel is a long rectangle. It is twice as long as you want your tunic to be, because it’s both the tunic’s front and the back. There is no shoulder seam, so instead you’ll want to mark the shoulder point. The shoulder point is exactly halfway down the panel, so fold the panel in half and mark that point.

ie, if you have a 22” x 82” rectangle, fold until you have a 22” x 41” rectangle, and hit the 22" long fold with your iron to crease. This is the torso shoulder point.

Cut two slits for the inset gores. These slits should be 1/2″ shorter than your gores, so if you have gores that are 23.5″ tall, cut your slits 23″ up from the hems.

Mark the midway point at the top of your sleeve. ie, if your sleeve is 18” wide at the top, mark it at 9”. This is the sleeve shoulder point.

Trim your gores. You’ll notice that the gores are cut as triangles. This means that they’re longer on the hypoteneuse than they are tall. Since we want our gores to hang evenly, trim the excess fabric at the bottom of the gores away so the edges are the same length as the gore’s height.

The next two steps won’t be French seamed yet, because they’re the neckline and the inset center front and back gores.

2. Sew the neckline with a facing

Before sewing the inset gores, I sew the neckline onto the body panel using this method. Since we're using linen, the raw edge of the facing ought to be finished, or it will fray in the wash. The easiest way to do this is to serge or zigzag the raw, outside edge of the facing.

I recommend sewing the neck facing as the very first step. It's one of the most difficult part of sewing a tunic, so if you're going to botch it, best botch it before you've sunk more labor into your project. Again, use this tutorial to learn how to sew a neckline facing.

3. Sew the inset gores.

Use “whole” gores for the inset gores, not ones that are pieced together along one side. Now, French seams only let you insert a piece into a seam, not a slit that’s closed on one end. On the Bocksten tunic, this means the inset gores cannot be French seamed into the slit.

Instead, you’ll finish (via a serger/overlocker or a tight zig-zag stitch) the long sides of the inset gores, then do the same to the slits that the gores will go into. This binds the raw edges of both pieces, preventing fraying. If you’re serging, you won’t be able to get to the very top of the slit without mishap, so switch to zigzagging on your sewing machine for the top 2”.

Pay close attention to the very tops of the gore and the slit, which are the most fray-prone. Remember, gore and slit should be finished separately, then sewn together. This ensures that the raw edges on both sides are properly bound and won’t fray.

The edges of your inset gores might be slightly warped after you serge or zigzag them, because this is a really stretchy edge. A light touch with an iron will coax the edges flat again.

La Cotte Simple has a good tutorial explaining how to sew inset gores. The trick is to remember that at the very top, the gore will have the same seam allowance, but the slit’s seam allowance will shrink to almost nothing. If you need another example, check out By My Measure’s longer tutorial for sewing an inset gore by machine.

Once the gores are inset, press the seams. I like to have the seam allowances pointing towards the side seams. This will make the seams look tidier from the outside. Always try to iron linen only from the wrong side of your fabric. There’s a tiny chance that your linen might get shiny when pressed on the right side, so it’s safest to not risk it.

Sew the tunic: sub-assembly with French seams

4. Sew the sleeve to the gusset

Alric's tutorial tells you to sew the sleeve to the torso panel, then to sew the gusset into the corner between the sleeve and torso panel, but it is vastly easier and faster to sew the sleeve to the gusset before you sew anything to the torso panel.

The gusset is stitched to the side of the sleeve at the sleeve’s top, along the straight 6″ edge. 

5. Assemble the side gores

These 'pieced' side gores are assembled from two right triangles, which French seamed together along the straight of the grain (not the bias-cut hypotenuse!).

If you have enough fabric to you cut out your gores like this, you only have to piece one side gore-- all the rest will be whole triangles!

I like things to match, though, so I fold the other side gore in half and run a false seam down it. Now they match!

Why use these seamed gores for the sides instead of for the center front and back gores? It’s hard to line up the seam on the pieced gores with the exact middle of the slit, so I save them for the sides.

Sew the tunic: attach the sleeve-and-gusset and side gores to the torso panel

Remember to note which side of your torso panel is the “right” side before you start sewing sleeves and gores to the torso panel. This is another reason why it’s best to sew the inset gores and neckline facing on early: they’ll help you distinguish the ‘right’ side from the ‘wrong.’

6. Attach sleeve-and-gusset to torso panel

Match the sleeve shoulder point to the torso shoulder point, pin. Sew the sleeve-and-gusset construction to the torso panel using a French seam. Remember to not sew (or, god forbid, SERGE) over your pin!

Again, it's helpful to remember that the shoulder point on the sleeve bisects the sleeve, not entire the sleeve-and-gusset combo. If your sleeve’s top is 18” wide, the shoulder point is 9” (ie, half the sleeve) down.

7. Attach the side gores to the torso panel

The side gore must be placed below the side of the sleeve that has the gusset. If you sew it to the side of the sleeve without the gusset, you’ll place the side gore way too high, and it won’t be long enough to reach the bottom of the tunic.

Measure down 4” from the bottom of the gusset to figure out where to start the side gore. If you know you're going to wear your tunic pouched up with a belt, you could place the gore further down, but I think 4″ looks best. Leaving a gap between the bottom of the gusset and the top of the gore gives your tunic a visual 'waist.'

French seam the gore to the torso panel.

Advanced Technique: If you're an impatient jerk like me, you can attach the sleeve-and-gusset piece and the side gores to the torso panel all in one seam, like so. I find this to be trickier to pin and measure but much faster to sew.

If you adopt this technique, treat the whole side like it is one long seam, instead of sewing and turning the sleeve piece and gores separately. That's the beauty of French seams: long straight lines, not individual seams, are what's important.

Sewing the tunic: sew the sleeves and side seams closed

8. Fold gusset edge up to meet sleeve edge. 

Pin your sleeve closed along the orange line.

You'll be sewing your sleeve closed in one long seam from wrist to gusset. Work from wrist to gusset, not gusset to wrist. As you sew, you’ll very slightly stretch the side of the sleeve that has the gusset on it. You want this to be just slightly longer than the other side, so you’ll have a bit of fabric to work with once you’re sewing the other side of the gusset to the tunic’s side.

French seam your sleeve.

9. Hem your sleeves. 

Make sure to fold your hem up twice to enclose all raw edges.

10. Bring your only unsewn gusset edge to the side of the torso panel. Sew side seams closed.

This is the most difficult part of French seaming a Bocksten tunic, both to sew and to describe.

The first problem lies right where the top gusset corner meets the torso panel-- in that 90 degree corner under the sleeve. If you didn’t slightly stretch the sleeve in step #8, you may have very little seam allowance to work with at this corner while sewing wrong sides together.  This happens, but it’s not a huge problem: just start sewing with an almost nonexistent seam allowance and go very slowly, gradually expanding your seam allowance to the normal 1/4" seam allowance.

If you did stretch this, you’ll have seam allowance on the gusset side and very little on the body panel side. When you sew this, make sure you catch both layers.

The second problem (which isn't a very difficult one, but can be hard to understand) is sewing the bottom gusset corner to the torso panel. It is very easy to catch the bottom corner of the gusset wrong, producing a nasty lump, or miss it entirely, leaving a gap.

The solution is to not think of this as a bottom corner. Your gusset, though it looks like a right triangle right now, is still a square pattern piece.

Pivot it out, pulling it from behind the tunic, until it again looks like a square.

Tada! You're no longer sewing to a point-- you're just continuing one of those long straight seams that French seams love.

Continue your seam down the side, sewing the free edge of the gore to the torso panel. The top of the gore can be bulky, so go slow and take your time. Trim the entire seam and flip the tunic to the inside to prepare for the second pass.

The top gusset corner is tricky when doing the second pass of the French seam: if you aren't careful, you'll either get a pucker here or let the raw edge fray through. The trick is to start sewing this higher up than you need to, on the original sleeve-to-body-panel seam that you sewed back in step #6.

Sew this pass all the way down to the hem. Be careful catching the top of the side gore, again. You might need to slow down and ease your needle through this part.

Finishing the tunic: inspecting and hemming

11. Flip the tunic right side out. 

Make sure you don’t have any raw edges poking through your seams. This sometimes happens if you didn’t trim your seams in pass #1 enough. This will look like a cut edge poking through your seam.

If you find any of these stray “whiskers of thread,” just trim it off as best you can, flip the tunic inside out, and stitch the “second pass” between the sleeve and the gusset again, this time using a slightly wider seam allowance.

Flip it back out and check that the whiskers are all now safely sewn into the “second pass” of your French seam.

12. Let the tunic hang overnight before hemming.

The diagonally-cut (bias) parts of the gores are more elastic than the straight seams, so they’ll sag under their own weight, given time. Therefore, you won’t want to hem your tunic immediately. Hang your tunic for a day before you trim and hem it.

Here’s one I made! If you don’t have a dress form, try to use something sturdier than a thin wire hanger-- the tunic has a lot of fabric in it, so suspending it by the neck on a thin wire hanger has tiny chance of stretching the neckline out.

Mark your tunic’s hem so it’s even, then trim away any excess. Marking is easiest and most accurate if you can get the recipient to model the tunic for you. Here’s a great tutorial on how to mark and trim a level hem.

Sewing over the bulky French seam seam allowance will be easier if you trim them off at an angle at the bottom, like this. Don’t trim them too close-- just nip off a little on the bottom, oh, 1/4-3/8″ on your tunic. Your hem will also be easier to sew if all the seams lay in the same direction, ie, with the “open” part of the seam allowance going “downstream” of your stitching, rather than fighting as you sew past it, so press your seam allowances so they all lay one way.

Turn the hem up twice and hem using a narrow hem. The narrow hem may be intimidating, but it’s much easier to sew a narrow hem on a curvy tunic skirt than it is to fold up a wide one. If you have a serger, you can serge around the bottom of your hem, then use the line of serging as a guide to help you fold up the hem.

Press the finished hem.

13. Give everything one last press and you’re done!

January 2021: after years of thought, I don't really recommend using this pattern anymore. The numbers have never quite worked out. The METHOD is fine, but the measurements need work. Use at your own risk!

Note: The original pattern had some embarrassing problems, typos, and wrong numbers. It’s updated and improved as of April, 2016. Notably, the trouser rise is increased to 18,” the suggested gusset is now 8” square, and a confusing bit about buttonholes was removed. Thanks to everyone who offered pattern feedback, and especially to Ladi G of GorgTheBlacksmith, who helped concoct the original. Please enjoy!

This tutorial will teach you how to make a pair of basic, loose-fitting garb pants from your own measurements. They’re perfect whenever you need a simple, nondescript pair of trousers for a LARP, foam fighting, or reenactment costuming. They work with almost any kit: Vikings! Elves! Barbarians! Orcs! 

These pants have just four pieces: two pant legs, a drawstring, and a special piece called a 'gusset.' This extra piece is sewn between your pant legs. It will ensure you have an adequate range of motion. If you've ever had a pair of fighting pants rip at the crotch, look sharp: this is the piece you need to make your pants last.

Before You Begin

--Dagorhir fighting pants take a ton of abuse, and bad or thin fabric will shorten their life. Pick a sturdy fabric, like target, 7 oz linen, or anything from the 'bottomweight' section of the fabric store. Make sure you prewash your fabric so it doesn't shrink or bleed dye later.

--Pick a seam finish so the cut edge of your cloth won't unravel. If you're an absolute beginner, I suggest you zigzag over your seams. For pants, flat-felling or French seams are a good choice. If you want them to be super-durable, try stitching each seam twice or sewing down the seam allowance of your French seams.

--Take your time to measure and cut as carefully as you can. Use sharp scissors for cutting, a thin writing utensil for tracing your pattern (not a fat Sharpie!), and a ruler with 1/8" increments. Attention to details will make your experience so much easier!

Supplies

You'll need:

Measuring and Drawing Your Pattern:

--A flexible measuring tape --A pencil --A ruler --A yardstick --A pair of scissors to cut paper --A large sheet of paper to draw your pattern on (I like brown kraft paper or posterboard, but old newspaper, freezer paper, or sturdy wrapping will work, too).

Sewing:

--2.5 yards of sturdy fabric, prewashed and preshrunk --About two yards of sturdy cord for drawstring (thin clothesline, 1/2” twill tape, etc) prewashed —A writing utensil to trace your pattern onto your fabric --A large blunt needle or drawstring threader --A pair of fabric shears (different from the ones you use to cut paper. Paper will blunt scissors really fast, so keep one pair that's only used to cut cloth. If anyone cuts paper with your fabric scissors, you have my permission to cut THEM.) --A spool of polyester thread --A sewing machine or a handsewing needle --A iron (theoretically optional, but will make life MUCH easier)

1. Take Your Measurements

Using your flexible measuring tape, measure the:

A. Circumference of the widest point of one thigh + 4" = ______ B. Circumference of the widest part of one ankle (over the heel with your foot pointed) + 2" = ________ C. Distance from 2" below belly-button level to ankle, taken along outside of leg, + 3" = ________

When taking the outseam measurement (C), it's better to err on the side of too long than too short. It's possible to wear or alter pants that are too long in the crotch (at the very worst, you can easily shorten them before you put the drawstring in), but pants that are too short in the crotch are misery! We find that 40” to 42” is a typical height for measurement C.

The inches we added give you enough extra fabric to sew your seam (seam allowance), some room to move (ease), and, on measurement C, length so we can add a drawstring casing and hem (hem allowance). Specifically, each seam has a 1/2" seam allowance. The drawstring has a 1" casing allowance (.5" folded down twice), and the bottom hem has a 1" hem allowance.

2. Draw your pattern.

Note: You CAN draw your pattern directly on your fabric instead of first drawing it on paper. If you chose to do this, please use a thin, WASHABLE marking implement and be very careful how you allot your fabric. If you think you'll make more than one pair of these pants, it's wise to make a pattern to re-use. If the pants don't fit, you can check it against your paper pattern and make adjustments.

Cut out a rectangle of paper as tall as measurement C and as wide as measurement A. Fold it in half lengthwise, creasing sharply.

Measure down 18” from the top of measurement C. Mark 18” down from the top of your paper. This is measurement D.

At the bottom of your folded rectangle, draw a line as long as half of measurement B.

Draw a diagonal line connecting D to the outside edges of line B.

Cut away everything outside that diagonal line.

Unfold your paper.

Bam! This is the pattern for your pant leg. Label it 'PANT LEG, CUT 2' with your name and the date, including year. (You roll your eyes now, but in two years time when you’re trying to whip up a quick pair of trousers, you’ll believe me! Always label and save your patterns.)

On a separate piece of paper, draw a square that's 8” x 8”. Cut out your square. Label it 'GUSSET, CUT 1' with your name and the date, including year.

Hooray! You hold the pattern for one pant leg (you'll cut two of these) and one gusset (you'll cut just one).

3. Cut out your pants.

The fabric store probably didn't cut your fabric off the bolt perfectly, so you'll need to true your fabric. This seems trivial, but if you don't "true up", everything you cut will be crooked.

Lay out your fabric on a smooth surface, "wrong" side up. (In my pictures, I'll be using red for the "wrong" side and green for the "right" side.)  Lay your pants pattern piece down on the fabric. Remember that you'll have to cut another one of these, so leave enough room for an identically-sized piece.

Weight your pattern piece down until it won't shift easily. Anything small and heavy will work-- coffee mug, stapler, etc.

With a piece of chalk or a fine-pointed pen or pencil, gently trace around your pattern. Try not to shift the paper as you trace. Remove your pattern and lay it down again on the next part of your fabric. Trace again. Note: Most of the time in sewing, we cut things out 'on the grain,' aka parallel to  the selvedge— the sides of the fabric that are tightly woven, run along the length of the yardage, and don't unravel. For this project, you could also cut your pants out on the 'cross grain', which would put the selvedge at the top of your pants. (This makes the drawstring casing much easier to fold and sew!) Depending on the size of your pants pattern, one layout may use less fabric. Whichever direction you chose to lay out your pattern pieces, be consistent and make sure everything is laying parallel to the edge you chose.

Cut out 2 pants leg pieces. Try to completely cut away your chalk or pencil line so it doesn't show on the finished pants piece-- if you don't, your pants will end up slightly larger than you intended!

Out of the remaining scraps, cut out one 8” by 8” square gusset.

Yay, all your pattern pieces are cut out!

If you're working with a fabric that's the same color on both sides, you might find it helpful to mark each side 'RIGHT' and 'WRONG' on each piece. If you don't own any special fabric-marking implements like tailor's chalk, try writing 'RS' and 'WS' on bits of masking tape and sticking them to the appropriate side. This doesn't seem necessary NOW, but it will help you sew the correct sides together later on.

In my pictures, red is the wrong side and green is the right side.

4. Constructing your pants

Plug in your iron and set it to the appropriate temperature for your fabric. (Polyester, rayon, and nylon need low heat; linen and cotton can take a hotter iron. Use steam.)

Take your gusset piece and match its opposite corners. You should now have a doubled-up triangle. Iron along the middle, so you create a crease in the gusset. Unfold.

Take one pants leg and your gusset. Matching wrong sides together, pin the bottom corner of your gusset at the bottom corner of the pants rise. This is what it will look like:

Don't panic if you can't visualize how this become pants. It'll work out.

Starting .5" down from the edge of the gusset, sew the pant leg to the gusset. Stop .5" before the end of the gusset. These gaps will be your seam allowances later on.

Take your second pant leg. Pin this pant leg first to the pant leg above the gusset, and then to the gusset when you reach it.

Sew this seam.

You now have half your pants sewn. See? Easy!

Put your pants down on a table, right side up.

Fold the unsewn pant legs up so they're facing you. Turn the gusset up so it's facing you, too. It should look like this:

Pin the gusset to the pant leg. Since the rise is 18” and the gusset is 8” tall, there should be 10” above the gusset.

You'll notice that you can now sew up this pant leg, so pin that leg closed, too. Make sure to match up each side of the pant leg at the very bottom so the hem will be even.

Sew from top of gusset all the way to the bottom of the pant leg. Just one seam more, after this!

Pin from top of pants, along gusset, to bottom of pant leg.

Sew this seam.

If you haven't been using a seam finish that encloses the raw edges as you go, finish your seams now.

YOU ARE ALMOST DONE, HOORAY! We just need to add the drawstring and to sew he bottom hems.

5. Adding the drawstring.

Try on your pants and see that they're about the right height. If they're vastly too tall, you may carefully trim the top off 1" at a time. Remember that a longer crotch is fine, but a shorter crotch is unwearable. Remember that you’ll need to sit and lunge in these, which requires a longer rise!

To make the casing for your drawstring, fold the top of your pants waistband down a bit more than 1/2”, folding it to the inside. Fold the waistline down by the same amount, again. This should enclose the raw edge. Iron until creased. This 'casing' is where your drawstring will go. Don’t stitch this casing down yet!

Add two buttonholes or two eyelets to one side of your pants, so your drawstring can lace through the casing. NOW you should stitch down the edge of the casing. :)

If you prefer an elastic waistband, don't add the buttonholes or grommets. Instead, follow a tutorial http://www.ehow.com/how_7646909_put-elastic-band-pajama-pants.html]like this for inserting elastic into a casing.

REAL TALK: My machine sucks at buttonholes, so, when sewing for myself, I usually fold the casing to the outside of the pants. Topstitch the casing down, leave a one-inch gap at the front, and thread the drawstring through that gap. It’s not the prettiest solution, but it’s incredibly fast and easy.

Thread a large, blunt ('tapestry') needle, a drawstring threader, or a paperclip with your drawstring cord. Work your drawstring cord through the casing.

It might be tricky to feed your drawstring past the back seam, but be persistent. If you absolutely can't work your drawstring past any point in your casing, unpick several stitches of the casing until the trouble spot is loose enough to let your cord pass. When your drawstring is entirely threaded through the casing, be sure to re-stitch the unpicked spot, taking care to not catch the cord.

Note: Ladi G of GorgTheBlacksmith suggests that you thread the drawstring through the casing by feeding the cord into one buttonhole, going past the other buttonhole, and then going all the way around your pants before you feed it out the other buttonhole. This creates some tension inside the drawstring casing, so you can tighten your pants BEFORE tying them. It's a neat trick and makes wearing these pants way easier!

Tie knots or wooden beads to the ends of your drawstring cord so they can't vanish inside the casing.

Whew! That's the trickiest part done. :) Just hemming left!

6. Hemming

Hemming your pants is easy. Folding towards the inside, turn up the bottom edge of each pant leg once by .5". Turn it up .5" again. Press with your iron so the folds and bottom edges are sharply creased.

Sew as close to the edge of that fold as you can.

7. You're done!

Good job, you made it! Bask in the glow of having pants that won’t immediately blow out at the crotch.

Thanks for reading! And now, as Professor Elemental says, PUT ON YOUR FIGHTING TROUSERS.