Hi Everyone,

The student fashion show at the New Britain Museum of American Art was AMAZING!   All of the students, alumni and instructors did such a good job…  The “runway” meandered through three different rooms ending on the stairs–The models struck a pose until the finale! (sorry about the pic quality, I was snapping away on my iphone).

Now that the mod is over- (I was teaching the first class of the  morning @8:30 am … and the last class ending @10:00 pm) I am recovered from no sleep allowed schedule     I’m working on pants slopers and my “Fit your Tee to a T” video only class is live on Patternreview.com.   (I’m spending a lot of time at the post office… Thank you to everyone who has signed up for class… and ordered a pattern!)

I want to share another way to add room in the hip and thighs of your pants or jeans pattern.   Because I’m working with body-type pant slopers, I’m trying to categorize different adjustments that work better with different figures…  This particular way to add room in the hips works well for shapes that have a defined hip and full thigh… Check it out!

(Again… iphone pics     I colored the extra room added so you can see it better. This is different than just adding extra along the side seam, because it also creates extra vertical space–Making the side seam longer.  Because it makes the side seam longer, I’m going to adjust both the front and back legs so they sew back together accurately.  Follow along as I do this adjustment to the front leg below.

The first step is to draw a horizontal line across the pants pattern where you want to add room across the hip.  Then draw a vertical line from the waist down to the first line.  Cut out the rectangle as shown below.

The next step is to hing the rectangle of fabric at the waist so that it kicks out at the side seam the amount you want to add to the hip.  In this example, I’m adding 3/8″ .  Put paper under the slashed pattern pieces.  Tape them into position when you’ve got the rectangle in position.  Notice how the side seam has shifted out.  When we true up the side seam, we can add some extra room along the thigh too.

Add paper along the side seam below the repositioned rectangle and true up the side seam.

If you’ve got a curvy figure, give this adjustment a try!