Steps toward work chinos - my modifications of the Megan Nielsen Dawn Curve jeans

 

Christina on her deck in gray twill pants and a floral camp shirt

It's been more or less of a uniform for me until pandemic basically to wear chinos/khakis and then some light sweater, shirt, or blouse to work. If you look around though, there are very few patterns for this type of pants. It's strange really. The patterns that are around don't include my size. 

I do have the Dawn Curve jeans that fit me well, so I decided to try it. 

Some pinspiration: 

Dickies:  

 Eddie Bauer made some that I love but they don't show any on a larger model in a color that lets you see detail.

These from Target are baggier than I want:

Ok so here's the line drawing of the Dawn view B straight leg:

So let's see what needs to change. First, the yoke in the back needs to go. The way to do that is to tape at the seam line and then open up a dart about mid-pocket. My Eddie Bauer ones have 2 darts, but let's see. Second, the back pocket should be changed from patch to single welt, jetted, or double welt. The pocket might have a button through, or a button with loop, or have no button. The front coin pocket goes and the front pocket shape should be changed to slash (I didn't notice this until after I had cut mine out - oops!). Theoretically, the crotch should maybe drop a bit. There's like no ease there in jeans and dress pants have a bit. However, pants are unwearable for me if the crotch seam drops down so it chafes so I'm not going to change this.

A reasonable person would make a muslin, but my good fabric was $2.97/yd from GStreet in Rockville, Maryland and what I don't have is extra time to sew.  In retrospect, it would have been a good idea to cut larger seam allowances as I've done in the past, but I left them at 5/8".

I can say how great it feels to pull up Dawn jeans and zip and have them just be perfect. I have some hand me down pants from my sister that gape a bit in the back and press hard on my tummy. The volume is right but it's not distributed. 

Ok, the front looks pretty good and comfy.

Oh. Hm. more on this to come

Yeah. Clearly my back inner thighs are pulling from everywhere and anywhere they can. The rise looks too low, too. Although this is still probably better fit than any I would get in a store for rigid twill. 

None of this appeared on the others because they were shorts or they were the wide leg view. The wrinkles on the outside knee are due to the shape of my leg (drawn with a less than sign basically). 

I released the inseam from knee around to other knee, taking out the 5/8" seam and resewing just inside the serger line. I did the same from the knee to the hem on the outseam. I took in 1/2" (by sewing the seam farther over) on the inseam from the knee to the hem since I didn't want flared.

Let's talk about the back pocket. Lots of choices here: fake welt, single welt, double welt? Stitch in the ditch? Topstitch around? I decided on single welt. Now there's a way you sew a separate piece on and there's a way you fold it up. I decided to follow the instructions in Sew A Little Seam's Linden pattern Which has you fold up the part you push through from the front. I interfaced that which I think was a mistake. It looks a little less crisp. 

Picture of the back pocket of my black Linden skirt

Placement - I just put it where the top of the patch pocket was supposed to go. I didn't install it until after I tried them on because I didn't know what the dart situation would be like. 

How wide and how deep? They are 6" on the Lindens and 5" on my RTW pants so I went with 5.5". Unfortunately, one ended up narrower than the other. I think mostly because I was trying to do it on pants that were put together and things were pulling down. 

The fabric is a gray twill from the discount room at GStreet in Rockville, MD. The pocket lining was 25c fat quarters from Walmart.

I'm pretty pleased how they turned out, all in all. Very wearable. I think my inner thighs still need more! Never enough!