A couple weeks ago, after I splurged on Crafty’s awesome $19.99 sale, I spent a couple days watching classes on making jeans.
Angela Wolf has classes on Pattern Review as well as Craftsy. In Sewing Designer Jeans she uses her own jean pattern to talk you through the art of making your own jeans. Some great tips are on distressing the denim to create that broke-in look of your favorite washed and worn jeans. Other tips include topstitching options and, my favorite, hammering those multi-seamed, hard to sew areas for a flatter, easier to sew seam.
Another class I’ve had in my Craftsy library is Kenneth King’s Jean-ius. The idea is to take a pair of your favorite, best fitting jeans and create a pattern from them … without taking the jeans apart! Since I no longer have a favorite fitting jean, I wanted this class more to learn to clone a pair of pants … any pants. My favorite part of this video is the construction of the jean. Kenneth talks you through so many why’s and how’s of putting together a pair of jeans and shares some of his favorite methods. This is definitely a class I will be revisiting.
I recently purchased the Jamie Jean pattern by Named Clothing. I’ve been a little obsessed with discovering what difference the European cut made in a pair of pants and my daughter has been needing blue jeans, so it was a good excuse. I have the pattern cut and ready to sew… but no time! It appears they may have to wait until after Christmas. But many of the tips from those jeans classes will be put to the test. 🙂
And lastly, I found this post by Don Morin on drafting a pair of American Jeans based on your own measurements. Creating custom patterns based on measurements has also become a bit of an obsession lately. I’m not looking for anything fancy, just something that actually fits!
I measured myself, which is always dicey, and drafted a pattern. I’m pretty proud of myself. Of course, the proof is in the pudding, so we’ll have to wait to see how the muslin actually fits.
All of this activity was actually from a couple weeks ago. With Christmas and high school football championship games, it’s been pretty busy around here. And Christmas is next week. I’m not ready! Oh, and my husband is having knee surgery Monday…before Christmas! It’s going to be crazy around here.
I really need to sew up a few zipper bags before Christmas….let’s see if I actually get it done!
I hope you’re doing a better job of organizing your time.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!
Ramona
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