Fabric Affects Fit – A Comparison of Clover Pants

Last year, I wanted to finally tackle sewing pants.  And yes, I made two pairs of pants, but they never made it to the blog – I still have to fix a zipper in one pair, and the other pair is made out of a brown fabric that I don’t know how to wear.  I want to share these pants, and demonstrate how a difference in fabric can affect the fit of the same exact pattern.

Note: this is a picture heavy post, and I’ll be talking about crotches.  Hey, it’s a sewing term!

I spent a week last year trying to get the fit right on a pair of Colette Clover Pants, and learned a lot about pant fitting by combing through my back issues of Threads, searching for articles online, and reading Pants For Real People.  By the end of the week, I ended up with these black Clovers:

I was pretty happy with the fit!  I took out a lot of bagginess in the seat and back leg by adjusting the crotch seam and back inseam.  The fabric was a RPL (rayon-poly-lycra) I had in my stash from when I thought I’d be sewing clothes for my old job, and it had just the right amount of stretch.  These pants still aren’t finished, because I botched the zipper, but I really should fix them because I love how they fit!

So after I made the black pair, I decided to use some taupe colored poly in my stash from Metro Textiles to make Clover #2 last fall:

I liked the fit of these even better!  The fabric was a little thicker than the RPL of the first pants, and had a nice amount of stretch and recovery.  However, I never finished the hem on these or wore them – the color just doesn’t work for me.  For some reason, this brown reminds me of those polyester pants with elastic waists by Alfred Dunner that old ladies wear to play bingo.  Trust me, the color looks a lot nicer here than in-person.  I can’t find a single thing to wear them with in my closet, which is why they’re all wrinkled looking – they’ve been sitting in a bin in my closet.  But all of that aside, I was very happy with how these fit, more so than the first pair.

Which brings me to Clover #3, which I stitched up last night.  Keep in mind – all three of these pants are cut from the same pattern with the same alterations.

For these Clovers, I’m using a stretch cotton twill from Mood Fabrics.  And the fact that this fabric is pink, and there were folds of excess fabric in the front…I just kept looking at these pants and getting the idea that I had camel toe going on, even though these weren’t tight!!

This was completely unexpected as well, look at all of that extra fabric in the back.  Now, I don’t want these pants to be skin-tight, since that’s not how they’re designed, and the instructions warn against over-fitting.  I need to be able to move and sit, but this just won’t do.

I mean, come on!!!  Maybe if this was circa 1998 the fit would be ok, but not the look I’m going for (I was watching “You’ve Got Mail” the other day, and Meg Ryan’s pants fit just like this in the back…and that movie came out in the late 90’s).

After studying my Pants For Real People book (which I highly recommend), and having a good laugh with Sonja and Neeno, I figured out what kind of alterations I need to make for these to fit.  I’ve got a case of – wait for it – “Crotch Oddities.”

@GingerMakes yeah, for reals pic.twitter.com/m0O5b36lzj
— Lucinda Campbell (@sewwrong) April 2, 2014

Yes, my friends, it’s a term that I read in my book.  Specifically, I’ve got a front crotch bubble, which can be solved by straightening out the front crotch seam.

I essentially pinned out a 1/4 inch of fabric right around where I had the “wrinkles,” effectively straightening the front crotch seam.

As for the back, I made the alteration that I did on the original paper pattern: took out leg width via the back inseam.  I pinned about a 1/4″ in from the original seam on the back leg, but still kept the original seam allowance in the front (in the above right photo, I only pinned the right leg with this change, the left leg is the same).  I’m realizing that it doesn’t look like much of a change from the photo on the left, but it really does fit better and look trimmer.  Again, I don’t want these pants to be skin-tight, and I need some ease for sitting.

You know, I ran into this problem when I made my Elisa-lotte dress recently with a stretch cotton fabric.  I’ve made the Charlotte skirt many times, and never had a fitting problem, but when I made it with the stretch cotton, I had to take it in a ton on the sides.  I’m guessing that that’s what I’ll run into when I work with stretch cotton.

So I guess the moral of this story is: just because a pattern fits with one type of fabric, it doesn’t mean that it will fit with another.  These were all stretch fabrics, with a good degree of stretch, but because they had different fiber contents, the fit that I got with all three were different.