Making: Basic Wide Legged Ankle Length Pants

It's winter time in Dubai! For the next 4 months, pants are back in the game. I didn't used to be crazy about making pants, but I think whatever is taken away from you, you end up nostalgic about. I posted a progress photo on my stories, asking if they should be full or culotte length, and got 75% full. I almost listened, angle length is still the longest pants should ever be in a hot climate:)

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TOOLS:

Fabric 1.5 m (I used 100% cotton)  |  Scissors  |  Pins  |  Thread & Sewing machine

I. My cut pieces (2 of each) below - front side on the right, back side on the left. You could use a pair of loose-fitting pants you have to trace the pieces. I show in this post how to do that.

II. From there the assembly is pretty straightforward. First pin and sew the curved front and back seams:

III. Then I like to sew the inseam and the side where I'm not putting a zipper, and pin the other side, which makes it easy to try the pants on for fit. I got it right on one go with these, but if at this point you notice some unwanted gathering in the crotch area, you can take in the front center seam accordingly.

IV. To finalize the fit at the waist, I added two small darts to the front. If you needed to tighten it more, you can always add the same darts to the back.

Then I cut my waist band, 7 cm wide and my waist measurement + 10 cm long just to be sure. I like to first press the band like shown below, first in half, then fold in the edges again. Then I use one of the edges as the guide when I sew, after pinning all around the waistline of the pants. I actually very often do not cut my waistband on the bias, just straight, because I use the following..

.. Bonus trick: I adjust the waist band as well, aligned with the darts on the pants, by sewing a little triangle shaped darts on it:

So I end up with a waist band like this after sewing it all in place. 

Last was to add my invisible zipper, which went SO WELL, and hem the pants.

The fact that the cotton is pretty firm accentuates the wide shape of the leg so much that I ended up taking the width in just a bit towards the leg hems. I think it was 3 cm or so, for a final leg width of 32 cm.

xo,

Julia