I’m still on the hunt for trousers I’m wanting to stay with for the long haul.  I’ve had a lot of short-term relationships with most of the trousers I’ve made, so I thought I’d give these a try.  I only own two pairs of casual trousers and find myself wearing them repeatedly during an average week, and I thought it would be fun to see if these actually fit a curvy girl like me given all the design elements so I can have a new pair of trousers to wear.

I made these up in a stretch cotton sateen, which is one of the suggested fabrics – minus the stretch.  The shine highlights every single possible hint of a flaw, never mind the actually fitting issues.  Completely unwearable and not a keeper in my books, so they’ve already gone to the thrift shop for some lucky person who probably won’t know she’s wearing a Chado design!!!

Anways, since I went to all the trouble of finishing these, I thought I’d share my thoughts about them. First of all, I’ve never inserted a zipper this way.  Yup, the fly is finished.And the instructions never do mention that one needs to trim that extra length of zipper before attaching the waistband.  However, once it’s all trimmed and stitched, this is what you’re left with.Isn’t that gorgeous?  It’s probably one of the more visually pleasing front flys I’ve ever done in my sewing life. Here’s the inside view of the front.

The pockets are part of the front yokes.And the reverse corners were fun.  The details always make a sewing project more pleasurable, imho.  Plain and simple gets tedious after a while, and this pattern is not simple or boring by a long set of instructions. Beside the unmentioned need to trim the zipper, there were a couple of notch match-ups that didn’t happen properly in the lining.  The side/yoke pieces double notches didn’t match up on the back pieces, as you can see above, and the same little problem popped up on the front lining piece along the top seam with the notches on the yoke.This wasn’t a good fabric for these trousers, although it was a luxury to sew.  It exaggerates every single wrinkle possible.The back patch pockets are flattering.The legs are very straight, and on a curvy person, that can appear wide – something I’m not too sure about.  I felt they were very dressy trouser-ish while wearing them, and I can’t decide if that’s because they were lined or roomy or a combination of both.  I wasn’t sure about altering these trousers, so I cut them according to Vogue’s size recommendations, and they are roomy.  I suppose the stretch factor didn’t help, but they could have been a full size smaller, which I’ll do the next time.And the crotch curve needs some altering for the next pair, but I wasn’t going to futz with these, and I was prepared to finish these, try them on and give them away if they weren’t a perfect fit due to the poor fabric choice.  Silly, I guess, but I had no problem finishing them up beautifully to pass on after wearing them for one afternoon.  Blame it on a new pattern with 69 (sometimes tricky) steps

Final verdict:  What an amazing trouser pattern.  I cannot wait to find the perfect fabric to make these up again.  Patterns with a thousand little details always make my sewing room a happy place, and these are the perfect ticket to happy detail sewing in a trouser pattern.