Drafting a pair of "mom jeans"

Yesterday was amazing! Usually book work day is the worst- I get so crabby and have to avoid everyone for the rest of the day.  Yesterday in the middle of book work I started to obsess about making jeans specifically  Mom jeans, the kind that are high waisted, fit at the waistband and are baggy though the hip/thigh leg. I did a quick search of the patterns online but quickly decided to draft my own. Also my printer is broken. I ordered heavyweight denim finished work and went strait to the studio (eliminating all crabbiness) and started drafting. I could see them in my mind which made them easy to draft, yoke in back, front pockets loose but tapered leg. I drafted them super big because I have a tendency to make pants a smidge too small.  

Then came time to sew... the fly front, something I have yet to master.  This first pair was a mockup but I still like to put in all the details because that way if they fit then I would have another pair also, practice makes perfect. I tried to read though directions that I have for fly fronts... to confusing, looked at a video- nope. Finally I just put my favorite jeans on the table next to the pair I was making and studied them. Then it clicked -fly in. The rest sewed up quick and just like that two and a half hours after starting, 5 minutes till I had to leave the house to pickup the kids the mockups were done,  and... they are huge, like 4” too big.

I picked up the kids, made dinner and tried them on again. The lines were right and 4” is just 1” off each seam so I started shaving it down and then took measurements, measure the pattern, measure myself, repeat. Once the numbers all made sense I started  another pair. I bought this linen last year and made a pair of loose beach overalls out of it. They were my most worn summer garment. When I got this linen it was stiff as a board and scratchy, I washed it on repeat for a week- throwing it in with the laundry again and again and now it is my favorite material-heavy weight and pretty stiff but also soft, and it feels like it will last forever.  It seemed a bit of a risky to use this fabric as the last mockup was so far from fitting but I went for it anyway. I just barely had enough to squeeze the pattern into the wonky shape left in the cloth. I love making the same thing twice, back to back, I feel like the second time my mind has figured out the sew order and I can focus on the details.  I decided not to use top stitching thread and keep them looking more like slacks than jeans. I finished them around 10:30 and tried them on. They fit!!! Perhaps better than I had wanted. I was going for that ill fitting 80’s look and what I got instead was a lovely fit through the butt and hips. The only thing that I would change on my next pair is making a curved waistband. I debated wether or not I needed one and thought that because the are so high waisted that I didn’t but it gaps a little along the back and a curved waistband would fix that. Also I wanted back pockets but I like the look on this pair without them so I think I’ll leave them off for now. They have very large front pockets which should suffice. I can’t wait to make my next pair, and maybe now I will finally make shorts!