Navy & white striped pants

Another unfinished project done!

I cut these out over a year ago, and last week I finally sewed them up.

 I can't remember what pattern I used. As far as I can remember, my inspiration was this pair of late 18th century blue & white striped pantaloons from Christie's auction house.

 (Apologies for the terrible image quality. They don't seem to want people to save photos from their site.)

My fabric is an off-white cotton twill printed with 1" navy stripes. I got it years ago on a "buy one get 2 free" sale and ended up with something like 12 m of it. The waistband is lined in blue linen.

Fly pieces and waistband.

 I serged the leg seam allowances with a very narrow edge in purple thread, just because that's what the serger was set up with and I figured it was close enough.

The twill is fairly lightweight, so the rolled edge worked fine.

I must have spent a lot of time laying out my pattern pieces, because they matched up perfectly! Look at how well I lined up the butt chevrons!

I got all the stripes on the crotch seam perfectly lined up!

The hair canvas I had cut for the waistband wasn't quite enough on its own so I stuck some fusible interfacing in there too.

Canvas on the lining part, fusible on the outside.

 The fly has 3 navy blue buttons, but the shank buttons on the waistband are a very dark purple. They're a pretty good match though, unless you inspect them very closely. I couldn't get a good photo of the colour.

2 shank buttons and 3 whatever you call buttons without shanks.

 While assembling the fly I realized that I had forgotten to add an extension to one side of the waistband for the overlap, so I sewed an extra bit on.

Here you can see the addition to the waistband.

 I think the reason I didn't finish these at the time was that I didn't know quite how to do a button fly, and was intimidated by the curved seams on the front waistband.

 There's not much to say about the construction. It's machine sewn except for the hem and the seam on the bottom edge of the waistband lining. I think I had originally intended these to be more historically accurate, but the fabric isn't so I just sewed them how I saw fit.

Hemming with one of those longish herringbone stitches.

 I can tell from the tracing lines that I cut the pant legs a bit wider at the bottom than was on the pattern so that I could get the stripes to alternate all around.

They're a little narrower at the side seams, but not noticeably so.

 They don't really suit me as regular everyday wear, but I will wear them when we are at the lake. Navy and white stripes look best next to a large body of water.

 They fit me very well, but get wrinkled quite quickly.

 Unfortunately I completely forgot to add pockets. I must learn how to do the kind that button shut on the corner like the original has.

I got lake crud in my hems, so I guess my stitches weren't quite small enough.