Custom Jeans: part three
Remember how I said these jeans were a prototype not a muslin and if something went wrong I was going to need to make it work? Yeah...about that.
I patterned this issue out. I swear. I already took over 2 inches out at the center back between sloper and pattern, and I've triple checked that I didn't add it back in somehow. To fix this pair of jeans I will just stitch two one-inch wide darts into the back equidistant from the center back to eliminate the bulk of the extra fabric. I will also shave a tiny bit off the hips to manage the extra room below the yoke seam. There is no chance that I am unstitching all the top stitching that came after attaching the yoke to take it out and recut.
I spent some time altering my pattern pieces, and now that I've finished it, I'm wondering if I should have done it differently, or if it even matters which direction I hinge it. Either way, I think it's interesting, and I will definitely be making this pattern again so time will tell. The former math/science teacher in me really enjoys this kind of experimental geometry. I will probably end up redrafting this pattern in all three ways that currently occur to me just to see the difference in outcomes.
To alter the pattern, I taped the yoke piece onto the leg at the seam line, and marked out a one inch section corresponding to where I pinned the darts into my prototype. Then, I drew a cut line down to the hip line and out to the outseam since the excess fabric went below the yoke and into the fullest part of the seat of the pants (pic 1). Hinging at the outseam, I closed the one inch gap at the waist line (pic 2). Because I'm hinging at the seam line, the outseam stays the same length but the hip line gets a deeper curve. Then I redrew the pattern lines for my yoke to the old points at the outside hip (pic 3), carefully separated the yoke from the leg (pic 4), and taped in some paper scraps to redraw my seam allowances (pic 5).
So, now my question is: will hinging at the outseam result in a different fit than hinging at the center back, or splitting between both? What I've done is curve the hip edge in to bring the back closer to the body. Would it have been better to curve the center back in? Or to share the curving of the seams between center back and hip? I suspect that it would have been better to hinge toward the center back. Now I just need more denim for experimenting. I also need to redraft the waistband before I can finish this pair. See parts one and two here.