Sequoia Muslin

I needed grey pants. I had been hoping that the comfy pants in my last post would suffice, but they certainly weren't work appropriate. I was having trouble finding grey fabric that wasn't real heavy, wintery stuff. Grey is a great colour year round, looks awesome with bright colours in the summer. Why was it so hard? I had a large sheet in a lovely sort of sateen fabric, 50-50 poly/cotton, but it was a mysterious blue-grey. Next to blue it looked grey, next to grey it looked blue. But it was the right weight so I thought it would work as a muslin for Itch to Stitch "Sequoia" pants. They were on sale for their release, and were quite similar to what I wanted to replace. All those pockets!!

One day hubby was going to Canadian Tire and invited me along. I don't go often but needed a few things. They weren't on sale but since we were in that area of the store, I said "Let's look at ironing boards!". And wow, this one was on sale! Nice and big (though the point end could be pointier), it was a tight fit to get it in the FJ Cruiser, LOL. I have discovered that pins disappear on the grey print, though. And for some reason my iron decided to start leaking and it discoloured the fabric. And, the surface isn't entirely smooth. It's weird, but the front and back are higher than the middle. I thought it just needed to air out and decompress, but it has remained. The ironing board was very helpful with this project--dealing with the large piece of sheet material.

I decided I wasn't going to get crazy with all the pockets, the roll up tabs, snaps, and zipper. Just a quick and easy muslin. I couldn't find any waistband material that I liked, so I just went with black cotton-lycra. I cut out the waistband pieces and got to work.

One nice thing about this pattern is she shows what steps to do if you're doing a muslin. However, her idea of a muslin includes a zipper. I did a mock fly, no zipper. This was fine, until it came to the waistband pieces. I had a big gap in the middle LOL. So I just added a strange little panel. It's okay, as I never tuck in my shirt. Sometimes they get a little loose, and maybe I should add a snap or something. Or not. Love them anyway.

Are those acceptable butt wrinkles? They feel fine! My butt looks huge though and I don't have a big butt. 

The funny gap after putting the waistband on, and before adding the extra centre piece. 

No body takes pictures of me, so it seems I don't have a real picture of the finished pants. I will get on that if it ever gets below 33C here. They are actually really cool. I did find the leg width a smidge wide. I think because I'm shorter than I should be for my waist/hip, that the proportions just get a bit off. On the next pair, I did taper them slightly.