Jeans As Dark As My Soul

I made some solid black Ginger jeans last year, and basically wore them to death. The fabric was fading weirdly in the wash (even when washing them inside out) and I noticed the butt area was almost transparent. I didn't want to risk tearing through the seat of my pants while I was travelling, so the plan was to make new jeans before my road trip in September!

This plan failed.

I had made the Ginger jeans twice before and was pretty happy with how they fit, but the waist was always a little big and a little low on me. And I'm not a plumber. I could have easily adjusted the rise/waistband size, but instead my attention was drawn by a shiny new pattern: the Megan Nielsen Ash jeans.

Just so you know, the following pictures are my second version of this pattern.

Getting to these jeans was a SAGA. After my stretch jeans debacle with a Belgian online fabric store I ordered some black stretch denim from the Fabric Godmother. It arrived quickly, the quality was beautiful and it looked like I was going to get on my plane with some shiny new jeans on. I went for a size 27 based on my measurements, spent an evening and a day sewing and... They were too small. Not by much, but the waistband needed about 1,5 extra cm to be comfortable. They are wearable, but not on days with a lot of eating. So definitely not appropriate for a three week trip to the US. I wasn't going to pass on those pancakes.

So, bummer! I packed overalls instead and reordered the same fabric when I got home (because it was really awesome). And then they e-mailed me to say it was out of stock and would take about two weeks to come back in. They were perfectly nice about it, giving me the option of getting a full refund if I didn't want to wait, and replying very quickly when I had questions. A+ customer service, unlike during the stretch jeans debate from earlier.

Anyway, my fabric arrived on Monday (right before the Belgian post went on strike, finally caught a lucky break!) so I prewashed it and got started. This time I cut a size 28, hoping that would be enough room to make these comfortable.

Brand new- already dusty.

I followed the instructions, but did change the fly construction a tiny bit. The instructions tell you to stitch the zipper to the fly shield, attach the separate fly piece (which I like, I feel like the seam makes it more sturdy than a cut-on fly), baste the crotch seam, stitch zipper to fly, unpick the crotch seam and fold it out of the way, topstitch the fly, restitch the crotch seam and add bartacks and topstitching to keep the fly shield in place. I did this the first time and found it was very hard to get nice-looking topstitching with all the bulky fabric folded away (it seemed to still be in the way, no matter what), and stitching the crotch seam wasn't that easy either. So what I did: don't baste the crotch seam, just stitch it, fold the fly shield out of the way for the straight part of the topstitching and stop just before the curve, fold the fly extension into position and continue topstitching. I pulled all my threads to the back and made sure my stitching lines lined up, and you can't really tell I did it in two steps. That, and it also catches and secures the fly extension. Neat!

I used some of my precious Freesewing hardware, even if it's not a freesewing pattern. I am wearing a Huey hoodie in some of these pictures though!

The pattern offers two pocket sizes, which is awesome. I used a cotton lawn and went for the largest size. You can kind of see them through the fabric but I CAN FIT MY ENTIRE HAND IN.

Here's the obligatory butt shot! I like the rise on these, they stay up without a belt and I don't feel like my buttcheeks will be on show if I bend over. I never really liked the look of really high waisted skinny jeans, so these feel well-balanced.

This fabric feels like it's higher quality than the last pair, so I'm hoping these will last a while! In any case, they are stretchy enough to do this kind of stuff: