Jeans, step one

Posted on February 19, 2024
Tags: madeof:atoms, craft:sewing, FreeSoftWear

CW for body size change mentions

A woman wearing a pair of tight jeans.

Just like the corset, I also needed a new pair of jeans.

Back when my body size changed drastically of course my jeans no longer fit. While I was waiting for my size to stabilize I kept wearing them with a somewhat tight belt, but it was ugly and somewhat uncomfortable.

When I had stopped changing a lot I tried to buy new ones in the same model, and found out that I was too thin for the menswear jeans of that shop. I could have gone back to wearing women’s jeans, but I didn’t want to have to deal with the crappy fabric and short pockets, so I basically spent a few years wearing mostly skirts, and oversized jeans when I really needed trousers.

Meanwhile, I had drafted a jeans pattern for my SO, which we had planned to make in technical fabric, but ended up being made in a cotton-wool mystery mix for winter and in linen-cotton for summer, and the technical fabric version was no longer needed (yay for natural fibres!)

It was clear what the solution to my jeans problems would have been, I just had to stop getting distracted by other projects and draft a new pattern using a womanswear block instead of a menswear one.

Which, in January 2024 I finally did, and I believe it took a bit less time than the previous one, even if it had all of the same fiddly pieces.

I already had a cut of the same cotton-linen I had used for my SO, except in black, and used it to make the pair this post is about.

The parametric pattern is of course online, as #FreeSoftWear, at the usual place. This time it was faster, since I didn’t have to write step-by-step instructions, as they are exactly the same as the other pattern.

Same as above, from the back, with the crotch seam pulling a
bit. A faint decoration can be seen on the pockets, with the
line art version of the logo seen on this blog.

Making also went smoothly, and the result was fitting. Very fitting. A big too fitting, and the standard bum adjustment of the back was just enough for what apparently still qualifies as a big bum, so I adjusted the pattern to be able to add a custom amount of ease in a few places.

But at least I had a pair of jeans-shaped trousers that fit!

Except, at 200 g/m² I can’t say that fabric is the proper weight for a pair of trousers, and I may have looked around online1 for some denim, and, well, it’s 2024, so my no-fabric-buy 2023 has not been broken, right?

Let us just say that there may be other jeans-related posts in the near future.


  1. I had already asked years ago for denim at my local fabric shops, but they don’t have the proper, sturdy, type I was looking for.↩︎