I’ve been doing more sewing “on the inside” – this time I’ve made these curvy-seamed trousers (#12) from the May 09 KnipMode which should come as no surprise since you already know that I prepared them in advance as an activity pack.
I sewed most of these last Sunday, but took my time handsewing the invisible zipper, waistband, and hems, which I’ll explain later… Once again, apologies for the iPhone photos, but I’m planning on doing a nice & crisp DSLR photoshoot again once they and I!) am finished. But for now…
(bonus points if you’ve noticed the room looks different! My shower had a leak of biblical proportions so I was moved to a room in the neighbouring haematology ward for a few days until the mould, dust, and fumes settled. But I’m back in room, sweet room again now)
Here you can see how the two sides of these look completely different, with neither haveing a traditional straight side seam.
Pay particular attention to the right side, where the curved front seam and the inset corner of the waistband come within a few inches of each other, looking really cool!
But the first and most difficult part of making these was mentally figuring out how all the pieces went, as the sides are the most complicated parts, and (of course) not shown on the front/back tech drawings…
The KnipMode fashion photo was no help here, either, as there was only one shot and the model was sitting down with a tunic overtop, only showing the trouser legs (which I was kinda concerned would be too wide annd make me look super short, but these aren’t as wide in real life, thank god).
I had to modify a few things here to work around the tiny red sewing machine‘s limitations – as mentioned before, the foot pedal is only on/off with no speed control so I’m opting to do any precision work by hand, even though it takes way longer. So I machine basted the left side invisible zipper in, then sewed it in by hand. Likewise with the waistband, I stitched-in-the-ditch by hand on the waistband seam, catching the facing on the inside, which took me a little less than two hours.
One thing I can’t get around, though, is that it doesn’t have any buttonhole stitches (and the zigzag stitch lengths can’t be changed) so short of buying a rare antique Singer buttonholer on eBay or doing everything as bound buttonholes (weird on trousers!), any buttonholes have to wait til I get home, so the back waistband flap is just pinned here.
I made a size 44 here since I intentionally packed on a few pounds before my admission (since all the doctors, nurses, and former patients told me I’d lose a ridiculous amount of weight), but seeing as I’ve only lost, err, 2 pounds after 2.5 weeks inside, these are still a little tight around the hips. But I’ve got plenty of time to get back into shape over the next few months so these should fit pretty well once I’m on my way back to normal weight. One thing I’m not certain about, though, are the smiley crotch wrinkles, which may or may not fix themselves as the trousers sit lower on a smaller frame. This is my first time using Knip’s crotch curve as-is (I’d altered it to match Burda’s curve on the KnipMode boyfriend jeans) so it’ll be interesting to see if it’s okay when the trousers fit properly or if I need to do the mirroring as standard in the future.
I was leaning towards just doing a jeans-style machine hem on the legs, but then I realised that there isn’t any visible topstitching anywhere on these so that’d look really out of place. So I took the time (which I’ve got plenty of!) to hand stitch the invisible hems here.
Up next: probably the top from the same May issue, though I’ve taken a bit of a sidetrack to drool all over the copy of Brazilian pattern magazine Manequim that Tany sent me. Oh. my. gorgeous. Will spill some details in time, but until then, have a whirl through their free download patterns (size chart here)!
Hospital update: The doctor brought me the fantastic news this morning that my neutrophils (bacteria munchers) went up (for the first time ever!) to 0.7 today, which is the highest they’ve been since about February and the first sign that my donor stem cells are beginning to graft and do their job!! And it’s only Day 11! 😀