Wide Legged Wool Pants

A couple of years ago, I bought a piece of wool suiting with a small amount of stretch from The Fabric Store.  At the time I intended to make a pair of Closet Case Sasha Pants from it.  I had small niggling doubts though about the weight of it and the suitability of such fitted pants in such fine fabric.  I made a pair for Courteney out of a similar fabric in a different colour way and although she was very happy with hers, I felt that it was just a little too light for my liking and lifestyle.  Her pants were intended to be for getting her to and from her football refereeing duties, mine were to be for sitting around in at the office.  So the fabric sat in my stash awaiting the right project.

My winter sewing list included a pair of wide leg pants, and this fabric I thought might just do the trick.  After mulling over my options, and pulling out a few Burdastyle patterns, I decided to actually use what I had already worked with and just tweak it a bit.


I really like my olive suiting New Look 6459 pants but what doesn't thrill me is the back zip and the straight waistband which tends to just crumple on my short waist.  Changing the back zip was a simple fix but creating a curved waistband not quite so easy.  Rather than just change things up on the fly as I tend to do, I decided to redraw the entire pattern.

I started with my regular size as drafted and drew in a fly using Closet Case Sasha as my guide because I do like the way this fly goes together and sits.  I then lowered the waist by 3cm.  It was at this point I decided to remove the front darts.  To do this I drew a horizontal line from the crotch point and a vertical line through the centre of the dart.  I cut open both lines but left a small hinge at the edge of both sides of the leg.  I then taped the dart close and re taped my horizontal line where it naturally wanted to sit.  This was a super easy fix and worked beautifully.  I then just narrowed the legs slightly because being short, I really didn't want to visually shorten my legs more than necessary.

After much deliberating I then added a third pattern to the mix.  I used the curved waistband from Closet Case Morgan Jeans.

Because my pants fabric was light weight I then began looking for suitable fabric to line them for extra warmth and to avoid them stretching out with wear.  I found in my stash a piece of light weight mystery synthetic with a small amount of stretch.  I had picked this up during one of my op shop trips and I had a small amount left after completing another project.  There wasn't enough to cut the lining out without seams below the knees on each piece but I wasn't particularly concerned because it would never show anyway.  The final piece of the puzzle came in the form of a pair of pyjamas Courteney had cut out one day and decided against which had been thrown in my scrap bin.  I used a piece of this to make the binding for the waistband.

I am really happy with how my new pants worked out.  I am really starting to like the wider leg pant look.  A bonus is they are super comfy to wear.  Will I make these again?  Yes definitely and I have the perfect piece of fabric lined up in my stash but I think that can wait until spring.