Lou has a pair of old capri pants that she got from, uh, Le Senza that she used as pyjamas pants. She loved them – they were comfortable – but as things happen, they wore out.
Lou bought some fabric back in September to have made into capri pants in the Maldives. Unfortunately, as the story goes, the tailor who sewed the pants (they brought the existing pants in to be used as a pattern) botched the job with an abundance of plumber’s crack showing. 😮
As the story continues, Lou or Kim or whoever picked the pants up didn’t actually look at the sewing job until they got it home. There goes the opportunity for a proper cuss-out!
Kim, unfortunately, has many similar stories of experiences with other tailors in the Maldives. She has not yet found a tailor who can do a decent job.
Enter Lou and Ike into my household, which includes a sewing machine and an offer from me to teach Lou how to sew.
First step: Lou has to pick apart the existing pants so we can make a pattern from them.
This takes much longer than I would have anticipated, but on the other hand, Lou is watching a movie while this happens, so, yeah, understandable.
When she’s done, she irons her pieces, we pick the best of the front and the back, and we lay it out on paper and trace around the edges.
This does not, of course, produce a perfect pattern piece.
For one thing, fabric, as it becomes worn, stretches a bit. For another, tracing around the edges produces less than consistent lines. For another, she didn’t undo the hem or the waist band.
So adjustments are next. Add in a bit for the hem and waist band, straighten out the bits that should be straight, and using my handy dandy French curve, make the curves curvy instead of wavy.
S’all good. 😀
