Finally....finally....here are my Anna Allen Persephone Pants, after five toiles and some comedy errors. I love the shape and style of these sailor pants but in retrospect the fact that they have no outside seam meant they were tricky to fit. This was this was my FIRST EVER time trying to fit trousers so they were possibly not the best choice to start with! But you live and learn, and I've learned a lot. Details below.
Toiling
I know some people like to jump straight in to a pattern, but I'd really recommend making a toile of these first - as mentioned above, you don't have a side seam to play with if they are too big or small and this can cause heartache!
I toiled my first pair in a size 16 (no adjustments) but they were too big (right), and I think this style needs to be tighter at the top to balance the wide leg. I also had weird folds around the front crotch.
I went on to make my second toile in a size 14 (no adjustments) which were a much better fit around the waist, but were very tight around the bum. Trigger warning: if you don't like wedgies, look away now (left)!
I used two online tools to help me work out what trouser fitting adjustments I needed to make. The first was the Closet Core Pants Fitting resource which is based on the Sasha trousers but is incredibly useful for other patterns too. The second was the Colette Pants Fitting Cheat Sheet. Thanks to both for producing such excellent free resources. There are other useful trouser fitting guides such as Tilly and the Button's Common Trouser Fitting Adjustments which are great too, they just didn't go into as much detail as I needed.
After much research, toiles 3 & 4 involved extending the back crotch by 1cm and the CB waist by 1cm, and also extending the front crotch by 1cm and raising the CF wait by 1cm. I also scooped out the back crotch by 4cm to make room for my larger bum, in effect creating more of a J shape to the back crotch curve.
Because of all the scooping I had to add back 2cm at the hip. This (right) was toile 4 prior to extra room added at the hip. As mentioned there isn't a side seam, so i drew a line from the waist of the leg down through the centre of the leg pattern piece, and slashed and spread by 2cm. Finally, I shorted the leg pieces by about 4".
This whole process took many weeks and a lot of patience! But I wanted to go slow and learn as I went, and whenever I got frustrated I would step away for a week or so. Eventually I was happy enough with my pattern adjustments to go for it with my main fabric which was a Khaki cotton twill from Minerva.com. But then.....
Cutting
...in my excitement to be finally sewing Persephone pants to actually wear, I accidentally cut out two right legs.....sigh. The pattern is cut on the flat and the cutting layouts are really clear that you turn the leg pattern piece over for the second leg: this was pure brain fog on my part.
Luckily there is only a slight difference between the right and wrong sides of my fabric so I persevered and finished them but I know they are imperfect and that's annoying! However I've worn them out in public and no one has stopped me to ask why one of my trouser legs is inside out so that is reassuring.
The moral of the story here is to go slow and double check what you are cutting!
Sewing
The part of the pattern I was most nervous of has been the fly fastening but the excellent pattern instructions were so clear and easy to follow that the button fly turned out to be really straightforward. And having made 5 toiles I am now an expert in button fly fastenings haha! I used brass buttons from The Textile Garden which were perfect, and a 90/14 needle for the belt loops and anywhere else where there were several layers of fabric. I omitted the front pockets because I felt like they added extra bulk, and my tummy is bulky enough already!
Ultimately I'm pretty happy with how these turned out. They're slightly big (I think my fashion fabric might have more give than the calico I used for the toiles, either that or the stress of fitting them caused me to lose weight!!They are clearly not perfect, but as my first pair of trousers, my first attempt at trouser fitting adjustments and my first fly fastening, I'm going to put this down as a win.
