Final chapter in the pants fitting adventure – for now

I am a broken woman – I give up with the pants fitting (for now anyway). I have tried everything. I have Googled for hours on end, I have wathed tutorial videos, read books, looked at other peoples progress on blogs. I have made a crazy number of slopers, and I am not at all closer to a solution. So, for now: A break from the pant fitting.

The past two weeks I have made 7 slopers – and each sloper I have made numerous changes to, sewing and ripping, sewing and ripping etc. I have been very focused on trying to figure out why I have this back thigh pooling. 25 years ago, this was the reason I started sewing: No pants fit me. My mothers sister taught me to sew (she was a professional pattern maker), but I didn’t follow through with the pants back then, as I wasn’t skilled enough to make pants that I would wear. Now I have the skills, but sadly not my mothers sister anymore, as she passed.

So I have tried to fit these pants myself. I have made all kinds of alterations; flat seat, sway back, thin back thighs/ big front thighs, tiltet pelvis, pinning out a fish eye dart etc. After all these alterations, and hours spend online looking at other people struggle with this, I believe that my issues is due to me tilting in the pelvis, sticking the butt out. I suspect that the wrinkles this causes, looks similar to other issues, as most of the recommendations I can find for removing pooling on the back thigh, is to remove fabric from the inseam of CB/ inside leg, tapering to nothing at the side seam. I have tried this numerous times; pinning out on back thigh/ CB/ back knee, and pants look GREAT! I then open the side seam, and sew the pinned out – and then it looks horrible. Gah!

See? Pinned out – looks great! Paper pieces changed, new pair made; looks horrible. (Most of the times I just opened the side seam and made the alterations, but I don’t have a picture of that 🙂

Removing fabric from the in seam and tapering to the outer seam is also directly the opposite that is recommended for the tilt I have in my pelvis from the Singer pants book. Also, I can see that my Liana pattern (that is the best fitting pants pattern I have) have the tilt that is recommended in the Singer book for my hip tilt, so this is probably why they fit me so well. Also, when looking at my cling wrap sloper I can see that I shall definitely not take out CB tapering to nothing at the outer seam, as this will angle the legs the wrong way for me – if anything I should do the opposite to accommodate for the angle between my hip and legs. In the book they have a drawing of the tilt I have, and recommend doing the protruding seat alteration for this. When I look at the photo in the book, it looks spot on like my issue with the bagginess below the butt!

So I tried to make a pair where I had made this alterations – samesame again. All these alterations, and almost no change in the pants! It’s just crazy!

All this has lead me to the conclusion that I need to remove fabric in the center of the back thigh, tapering to nothing at both the side seam and center back seam (I have tried removing the same amount all the way through the legs too – same result: looks great when pinned out, no difference when transferred to the side seams too). So, I have been Googling how to do this (besides the fish eye dart I have tried earlier with no luck), and came across this post; https://iconicpatterns.com/tag/fish-eye-dart/. I then did the Muller flat seat alteration, 2,5 cm/ 1″.

As a last attempt, I tried to take the cling wrap sloper, add 0,5 cm on outer seam and inner seam (not on CB and CF), add seam allowance and sew them up. They look exactly as bad as the others.. They are tighter, so not as much pooling, but the strange lines are there, criss crossing on the back thighs.

OK, now I really don’t know what to try next. I believe that I need to remove fabric locally below my butt, but without affecting the side seams. I have tried fish eye dart and Muller with no noticable change in pooling. Also, my pooling don’t look like other peoples pooling – mine is sort of cris crossing on the back thigh, where others point to some trouble area. I will take a break from pant fitting for sure, probably just knitting on my sweater for the next few days! If anyone has had the same issue and have any ideas, please let me know in the comments 🙂