Heavily Modified Lander Pants

 

Jeans are my favourite thing to wear in the winter and the more cozy the better.  I have a few favourite patterns but lately my all time favourite is my heavily modified True Bias Lander Pants.  At this point the alterations are too many to list here but the major adjustments are to add a curved waistband, jean pockets and a zip fly.  My latest pair are made of some lovely rigid denim in 375gsm stonewashed denim fabric  from Minerva.com gifted to me as part of their ambassador program.  I was really excited to receive this fabric because light coloured denim fabric is kind of unicorn fabric and is extremely hard to find.  The last pair of jeans I made in light coloured denim was stretch fabric and the recovery was disappointing so these jeans have long since been donated.  

Originally I had thought I would make a pair of wide leg Landers with this fabric, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to make a blend of the Lander pattern and Closet Core Morgan Jeans.  In the winter, the last thing I want is cold legs so making a more close fit leg was my preference.  I knew this wouldn't be a difficult hack so, I went ahead and cut out the Lander Pants.

It has been a while since I made this pattern in a non stretch fabric, so I was very careful to make sure I had plenty of ease.  Usually I have to run them in quite a bit so I was confident that my pattern would accommodate the lack of ease and I wasn't wrong.  There was a bit of faffing around to get them to fit nicely because of the lack of forgiveness in the fabric and I nearly abandoned the whole project when the results were looking like a failure but I am all about completing my projects where at all possible so complete them I did.

I chose a beige top stitching thread for this pair, because the colour of the denim is quite subdued and I wanted the topstitching to not be a statement.

I am pleased I persevered with this project because I am really happy with how they turned out.  These are super comfortable which is a very weird concept for a rigid jean.  After completing them though, I felt they looked just a little pristine so I took to them with a piece of super fine sandpaper, roughing up the side seams, legs and back pockets.  I then threw them in the wash with some fabric softener.  They are now super soft and have that lived in look I was after.