Fitting the Chi Town Chinos – back thigh pooling and much more.

So, I have been eying the Chi Town Chinos for a while, especially after I saw someone made them in denim! I have been looking for a jeans pattern in non-stretch denim, and besides my try with the Morgans I have had no luck. The Morgans was just so far off my fit that I ended up giving up.

Before I sewed the first muslin, I made my usual adjustments;low butt and flat butt. I compared this pattern to my Lianas, and decided I should wait with the flat pubis adjustment. So, first muslin:

Not too bad! A bit of whiskers in the front crotch (definitely need that flat pubis adjustment!), and on the back a bit pulling at the calves and pooling of fabric at my back thighs (this I always have – now I want to find out what this is!). It seems I could also use a bit more flat butt adjustment.

Ok, so I took out a horizontal dart in the front for the flat pubis adjustment, that sure helped. In the back I took out the seams at the calves, did additional flat butt and low butt. Hmm, didn’t really help all that much. Still pooling of fabric on the back thighs, still pulling at back calves. Frantic Googling happened.

I took even more out for low and flat butt and shaved off of the back inner thigh. Now I have mom butt/ uni butt and STILL pooling of fabric at the back thighs. (The dogoes come running every time I take photos, as the large mirror is at the front door, so they are hoping for a walk! Also, I think that Tesla is all like “Mahm, I really think you need to add a bit more CB, the lines drag there”).

OK, so I looked at those drag lines and decided it might be due to larger thighs (remember, it is all in proportions and not absolutes, so even though I don’t have large thighs, they could be large compared to my back thighs/ butt). So I sliced open the thighs. Interesting that most of the ”too tight calves” disappeared when I slit open the front thighs. Still pulling at butt, Still pooling fabric below butt/ back thigh.

At this point I was really frustrated! I set out on another Googling, spent hours on the internet reading about others with the exact same problem, but no solution. Gah! I ended up unpicking a pair of RTWs that fit better – they needed a flat butt adjustment, but besides this they looked nice in the leg, falling straight down. So, how long does it take to unpick a pair of RTW jeans? The answer is FAR too long! But it was worth it, as it was very obvious that the angle on the leg was different on the RTW – sort of built-in knocked knee alteration. From the knee down I moved the leg about 2 cm/ 0.8″ out!

Since I had sliced up my white muslin, I sew another – unfortunately I didn’t have any more white twill, I prefer this as every line is very easy to see on this. I made muslin 2 in army green twill, and have tried to enhance the contrast for you to see the lines:

This took care of the calve pulling, yay! But still lines below the butt pointing at flat butt according to my go-to fitting page. And still a lot of pooling on the back thigh. My Googling led me to this page, and this is very interesting – some of the alterations are very different from my usual page. I tried what they suggested for the back thigh pooling, that it was due too excess fabric on the outer thigh so to remove here and finally, result!!! I only did it on one leg:

I am so relieved that I finally found the reason for the pooling. Obviously I still have a lot of tweaking in the but area to do, and smoothing of the legs, but now I have a much better starting point 🙂

Unfortunately, when I added this to the pattern and sewed it up – still no significant difference. I ended up spending 4 whole days (+8 hours a day) on fitting these, and here are the before&after:

So, I have resigned: I cannot solve this by myself. I have now enrolled in a one-on-one sewing day with a professional, so hopefully she can teach me what to do 🙂 We will be making a pants pattern for me from scratch, I am very excited!

The final result of these pants are definitely wearable and OK, but I want something better when I make them myself; if not I could just buy RTW.