Uber Pants

I have been looking for a specific style of pants for years now, and can never find them.  The pants I wanted must meet three criteria:

1. Wide, low-tension, elasticized waist band.  I like just being able to slide pants on and off.  Plus, a wide waist band with low elasticity is fairly slimming, without pinching at the sides, or buttons poking out if you're wearing a shirt that's fitted around the waist.

2. Moderately fitted through the hips and butt, but fairly loose legs.  I didn't want drop crotch formless harem pants, but I didn't want ass-hugging yoga pants either.

3. Mid calf-length, gathered, elasticized cuffs.  I like mid-calf length pants as I think they still look business enough to wear to work in the spring/summer/fall, but casual enough to wear out.  They also make my legs look a bit longer.  I also wanted a gathered and elasticized cuff as I think that looks my slimming to the leg than a straight leg open cuff.

Not being able to find these pants anywhere, I decided to make my own.  I got inspired to do this while working on my DragonCon 2014 costume, which involved making a pair of pants fairly similar to these.

I had a pair of jogging pants that had a similar fit to what I wanted for the butt/hips, so I used those to draft a basic shape, which I then spend about 3-4 iterations pinning and trying on.  The waist should be about 1.25-1.5 times as wide as the widest part of your hips, so that you can gather the material and still be able to slide them on.  The crotch and legs you can taper and fit however you prefer.  Start by cutting them loose and then pin and adjust.  Sew the back and front seams together once you have the fit right, and then make one big stitch along the inseam from cuff to cuff.   I didn't take pictures of this part, but you can google some basic pants making tutorials.

When I was finally done I of course didn't draft the pattern onto paper to save, so now I'll have to do this all over again if I want to make another pair.  I'm something kind of dumb that way.

I made cuffs and waist band out of a stretchy spandex blend that I found in the activewear section at Joann's.  Basically cut a strip twice as wide as you want and about 10% shorter (depending on how stretchy your material is you can make it up to 20% shorter.)  Double it over with the good side facing in, so you now have it as wide and long as you want, and sew along the edge.  Turn it inside out and sew the ends together.

Next step is to "gather" the waist and the cuffs of the pants.  The easiest way to do this is with a sewing machine, but just google gathering fabric if you'd like to look at other ways.  Turn the tension on your machine as high as it will go, and your stitch setting as long as it will go.  When you start sewing don't do an overlap stitch, you want the thread to be able to move.  Sew all along the edge you are gathering, and as you do, hold onto your thread lightly to add more tension.  The fabric will get pulled through the machine, but the thread will advance very slowly, gathering up the fabric on the stitch as you go.  Leave extra thread at both ends, and then you can slide your gathered fabric along it as needed to increase or decrease the amount of gather.

With your waist and cuffs gathered you can attach the waist band and the cuffs.  With your pants right-side out Turn your elastic bands so that the part of the band that will face into your body is facing out (this should be the side that has the rough edges of the two ends sticking out.)  Slide the band over the waist or the cuffs so that the edges are aligned.  Then stitch these edges together.  When they are attached you can then fold the band up and will have a nice seam with no edges sticking out.  Remember to do this with a zig-zag stitch so that the elastic can stretch.  Here's what the elastic looks like pinned on.

Finished pants!