As soon as I finished these the Instagram-able hashtag of dark academia came to my mind. I'd even bought the perfect blouse for such an aesthetic a few months ago in what turned out to be a rekindling of my love for gothic fashions. I didn't actually do much research of the aesthetic beforehand, but I had an idea of what I thought it should be. I suppose this is vintage dark academia. It's also fitting since I'm an academic myself, so this was really fun.
These trousers turned out to be a bit of a mess, but it's mostly my own fault for not doing a mock-up and losing the instructions, and partly the patterns fault for being uneven. I'll let it slide since I've re-done the pattern now anyway. At least I got to tick something off my vintage wardrobe this year.
This photoshoot was so much fun (barring being caught by the church caretaker as he was taking down the flag from the church. I was there at 9am on a Saturday, have a lie in, pal!). Only the tousers are made by me, detailed below. The blouse is from Killstar (what I would call an alternative/goth clothing outlet. I recently rediscovered my love of alternative fashion, and this blouse was part of the haul), and the shoes are black Kensingtons from American Duchess with James buckles. The lipstick is Besame in Blood Red.
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| The coat is from Collectif |
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| judging you... |
The Making of...
This is definitely a lesson, as if I needed one by this point, in doing a mock-up. I do mock-ups for everything I make. Granted, they may not be very good mock-ups, and I may not do enough, especially for very fitted garments like corsets and stays, but I always do at least one. Not today.
Which may have been stupid decision #1. Actually, stupid decision #1 was cutting out the largest size of the pattern thinking that was a good idea, and ignoring the fact it was inches too big.
I don't like trousers. I think they're restrictive, so I've spent the last decade (yes, 10 whole years with no jeans or trousers) in black leggings or tights (always with a dress or skirt). But since getting into vintage fashion a year or two ago I really liked the wide legged trousers that came into fashion in the 30s and 40s (a la Katherine Hepburn). There were two problems. One; in the UK, a pair from a vintage repro website (because there's no way I'd ever fit into true vintage) are quite expensive. Two; I carry all of my weight around my hips, hence why I suit circle skirts/flared skirts (and why I wear them exclusively). The Hepburn style trousers tend to be quite fitted around the stomach area, or so most of the reproductions I saw were. There were the occasional pair that had pleats in the front, which I thought, based on past skirts I'd had, would suit me better, and skim over my hip/belly problem. This is the reason I cut the pattern out a few sizes too big, so I'd have enough room at the waist to put pleats in instead of darts. Oh boy, this was not the way to do that.
I used a Simplicity pattern, one you'll all be familiar with: 3688. This is a reproduction pattern, based on an original but altered for the "modern" seamstress, whatever that really entails, I'm not quite sure. Updated construction techniques? I actually have a place on Etsy that does reproduce vintage patterns as they were, but when I bought this I hadn't found that place yet, and it is more expensive, with good cause.
I didn't do any research on this pattern, the pros, the cons, the mistakes. I didn't even do a mock-up, as I mentioned earlier. I was lazy, my early Tudor gown was weighing me down (literally), and I wanted a quick, relatively easy project to complete over the long Easter weekend. I'd bought fabric for it (a grey wool suiting) a while back for this project, so I had almost everything I needed.
Except the instructions.
A recurring theme in my sewing room, due to the way I work, is that I'll start a project, patterning, and then I'll set it aside for months at a time, then when I come back to it, sometimes something's missing. In this case, it was the instructions. I'd never made trousers before, but I thought I could wing it, I mean how hard could they be?
Construction wise, they're easy to figure out, although if there's an order to do the panels in, I missed that. There were many problems with this pattern, all of which I would've seen had I done a mock-up.
1.) It was too big with just the darts, which was exactly what I wanted, so not really a problem. I got my front pleats, but left the back 4 darts because they looked really pretty.
2.) The crotch was far too low, almost at my knees, and I had no idea how to fix it.
3.) They were very wide, I mean looked more like 40s men's trousers than 40s women's trousers.
I added the pleats to the front, stitched them down a few inches at the top, and really liked the look. So one success.
I ended up having to piece a bit in at the crotch, but got confused, so this ended up happening.
Yep, that's a raw seam, on the right side. The crotch seam itself is fine, but the piecing seam is on the wrong side of the fabric. Did I go back and fix it? No. This is the crotch, no one's eyes should be anywhere near there. I decided to treat them like jean seams, and felled them down on the outside. Not ideal, but I knew I'd already f**cked these up royally, so what the hell.
The second dirty fix was to take a ton of width from the trouser legs. I only did this at the side seams, just to see, and liked it well enough, so didn't bother doing the same on the inseam. This, unfortunately, created a small problem with the back darts, which are placed a bit too far away from the centre back.
My last mistake was to make the waistband too narrow (I know, my brain was not working when I put these together), but that's a minor detail.
After I finished these I went ahead and altered the paper pattern, and realised that the back leg and front legs are different widths. No idea if that's how trousers are supposed to be (I thought not, so made them the same width in the updated pattern), and I fixed the crotch, so no more terrible piecing.
Overall, I don't think they're bad for a first ever attempt at trousers, done without a mock-up and without instructions. I suppose these are a wearable mock-up, which I prefer anyway.
