Sizing things up

FML.

I made an amazing pair of pants. They’re not perfect, but they’re sharp and neat and look incredible.

Cool, right? I mean I did it all: the cutting, sewing, ironing (okay, so my husband did some of the ironing), hole punching, snap setting…

And, even though I followed the sizing on the pattern, they’re six inches shorter around the waist than the pattern said they would be. Yes, I did all that work only to them still end up fucked up somehow. As I said in the beginning, FML.

It’s a good thing I have good friends who are more experienced in sewing and cosplay to help me figure this mess out. Because of the way the pants are designed/put together (and because I’ve already set the damn snaps) there are only so many places I can add fabric to make them fit my husband. This will definitely change the overall shape of the pants, which pisses me off because if they were sized to the measurements the pattern said they would be I wouldn’t have to alter them at all. It wasn’t a measuring error on my part; it was on the part of the pattern company. I won’t name the company, because I’m sure they wouldn’t appreciate that (and because I kindamaybesorta already named them on Twitter in an angry tweet), but suffice it to say from now on I’m going to use the maximum measurements on everything and just size down if I have to. So much easier to take things in than let them out.

I probably also should invest in large quantities of muslin or some other cheap fabric for mock-ups. It means doing twice as much work, but it also means better sizing. I’m kind of kicking myself for not making mock-ups of these pants, but then again the construction is so complicated that it would have taken forever. In the future, I will mock up…and measure the patterns themselves.

Cosplay can be a bitch sometimes.

Advertisement