Cargo Pants

I finished the cargo pants two weeks ago, and have only now had the chance to take the photos.

For the workshop, Angie suggested that we use a track suit pattern for our cargo pants and stretch fabric. Now the only tracksuit pattern I had in my stash was Simplicity 3640 (OOP) which I had seen reviewed on Pattern Review and tracked it down as it is a slim fitting track suit pattern which is what I prefer.

So before the workshop I had traced off a copy of the pants and found a blue stretch twill in my stash for the toile.

Angie started the day off explaining all the features of cargo pants, the seaming details, pocket styles, and adjustments that we may want to consider.

First up we had to compare our hip measurement with the finished hip of the pattern and make sure that we had 2.3cm of ease as the minimum and thankfully that worked out to be the size 8 I had traced off.

By the end of the workshop Angie had tweaked my fit and had made the changes to my paper pattern, which were:

• Extend the centre front by 0.5cm to just where the crotch curve starts.
• Added a fly extension.
• Raised the centre front by 0.5cm.
• Scooped out the back crotch curve 0.5cm
• Redrew a new waistband due to my sway back
• Took in the centre back seam.

That night I was very enthusiastic and removed the chain stitch from all the pieces ready to do the adjustments, and this is where is sat until the ASG meeting at Alexandria on 2 July.

I soon realised that I didn't have enough fabric to cut a new waistband, so I transferred all of the above adjustments to the toile fabric and figured out I would continue with the toile using the waistband/yoke from the original fitting, as I really wanted to see how these were going to turn out.  The waistband/yoke needed a wedge out of the back yoke seam of 1.5cm on the fold and back to nothing at the cut edge, and then I added some elastic in the back yoke to keep it against my waist, needless to say I won't be wearing my tops tucked in.

The cargo pockets on the legs were traced from a Burda magazine that I had with me and then I have added some Antique Bronze snaps that I purchased in the US to keep the pocket flaps flat.  The patch pockets are the original from the pattern with some top stitching on them.

So here they are,

Front

Back

Cargo pockets

As you can see they still need fine tuning, which Angie has now given me, as a group of us had a "fitting session" at her studio last weekend, so I might try the adjustments on this pair which can be done with some minor frog stitching to the back waistband and crotch depth.

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Now I must apologise as there is no photo of the formal outfit, we had a lovely time, so much so that we forgot to take any photos of the evening.