Well, they're comfy

I finished the free Unfettered Patterns Barrel Leg Pants last night when it was already too dark to take photos.

As a reminder, here's the UP drawing of this pattern.

Here's my version.

I cut these out of mystery stash fabric. It's a navy blue woven, probably some cotton with maybe some rayon in it - this guess based on drape and weight. Provenance completely lost in the mists of time. I'm treating these as a wearable muslin.

The verdict is that they are supremely comfy. But maybe not so fashionable? Does fashion even matter? 

Asking for a friend.

I am glad I added 1.2 cm to the rise, which puts them at just the right height to sit at my natural waist. 

However, I did not need the extra room in the front and back leg seams, or at the inseam. Whoops. I sewed some of this out. The finished hip measurement seems to be about 112 cm whereas the pattern says it should be 108 cm. I kind of like the volume in this fabric. But it would be too much in anything heavier or stiffer.

The back, meh. Flat bum, too much fabric there. 

But I can definitely see making these again.

I have some lightweight synthetic fabric with lengthwise stretch, meant for hiking pants, that I bought from Core Fabrics last year. I think this pattern would make dandy pants for summer walks in the woods. Long pants are a must even on the hottest days due to the increasing prevalence of ticks, which carry some nasty diseases. 

I will cut size S/M with the extra length in the rise but no extra width. I may add cargo pockets or a zipper pocket in the right side seam. And I could see making additional darts in the lower leg. The barrel shape is pretty subtle as it is. This would not only emphasize the shape, but make the pants more tick-resistant by narrowing the ankle. 

Final assessment - a pretty good pattern, especially given that it's 100% free!

And next up: my custom barrel leg jeans project! I'm going to make them up 100% as per the pattern, no second-guessing. Can't wait to see how they work out.

New pants in progress

But not "those" pants. I got distracted by another barrel leg pants pattern. This one is free! And it's another new-to-me pattern source - Unfettered Patterns.

The website has a variety of confusing click-bait buttons. Like the "free PDF" button in the image above. That is NOT the download link. 

Stash diving revealed a length of navy blue cotton (?) - maybe it's a blend. It's nice and drapy and not totally rigid. So I figure it will cover for a variety of possible fitting snafus. If it works out I may make several pairs including one for summer hikes/walks in the woods. 

For future reference, I have cut size S/M based on my hip measurement. However, based on some comments including one that mentioned these were low rise, I added some extra fabric insurance in the form of 1.2 cm in the rise on all pieces and an extra cm along the vertical leg seams. I also cut size M on the inner leg on both front and back. I can always sew out this extra fabric!

Thanks for the comments on my last post! I want to resurrect my blog via shorter and less detailed posts (not so daunting) because other platforms have become such a swamp of ads and AI nonsense. If you leave a comment, I'd love it if you included your name because so many comments just show up as "anonymous" and I feel like I know so many of my readers. 

I'm kind of excited about this

Yesterday, I came across a new-to-me sewing pattern source - smartPATTERN - have you heard of it?

Mostly they offer jeans patterns. So many styles of jeans. I need new jeans. I was looking for a barrel leg shape, and theirs is intriguing. 

Notice it's "made-to-measure". Like a couple of other sites I'm aware of, you input key body measurements before clicking "buy". But that's not all. You also go through a series of menus that literally customize the pattern to your preferences, as well as sizing it for your body. 

Do you want that waistband up high or low? How much ease do you want in the crotch? How much oomph do you want in the barrel shaping? How should the barrel shaping be accomplished (side panels, darts at the knees, darts at the hem, or any combination of these)? Do you want them full length or cropped? What about the back yoke shape? The pockets? Zipper or button fly? The questions are numerous. 

So interesting!

I clicked to buy (will detail my styling choices later) and as I write, my order is still processing. 

Stay tuned.

Oh yeah, no promises I'll blog regularly, but there is so little information in English about this German pattern purveyor, that I want feedback. Who is still reading this?

Can I post retroactively? Filling in a gap from 2021

A friend told me she couldn't find the post on my blog about an epic machine knitting project that I completed on Christmas day in 2021. Nor could I, because it didn't exist! Poor, poor neglected blog.

To recap, one day in late summer of 2021 I got the totally idiotic idea to knit my husband a vest using left over bits of sock yarn in my (ahem) extensive stash. In intarsia. Based on a hand knitting pattern by Kaffe Fassett. 

Here is the photo from the original pattern (Ravelry link), which is in a book I happen to own. 

Of course, all the yarn that was originally recommended is long since discontinued. However, this is the type of project that practically begs you to use whatever you have on hand. 

I had so much miscellaneous fingering weight yarn, even including some orphan discontinued Rowan skeins sourced by my husband at thrift shops. How fitting to include them in my project.

Husband and I went stash diving and came up with a palette that worked.

I ended up using most/all of these yarns in the finished vest.

The pattern looks complicated but breaks down into understandable chunks. 

If you squint at the pattern photo, it resolves into a quilt-ish looking pattern of hexagons against a neutral background. The hexagons are comprised of 6 triangles each and the background is also triangles. Each triangle is 16 stitches wide at its horizontal side (base or top, depending on whether it is point up or point down) and 16 rows high. 

I decided that each hexagon needed to have two dark triangles, two warm coloured triangles, and two cool coloured triangles. I had two different neutrals (a warmer and a cooler beige). Other than that, my only colour rule was not to repeat the same colour in the same orientation too closely together. It had to look kind of random, but kind of ordered at the same time. 

This is what intarsia knitting looks like while on the machine. 

I used "butterflies" of yarn wound on my left hand - a butterfly wrapped about 20 times was more than enough for one triangle. Plus, the dangling butterfly was about the right amount of weight on the yarn to keep it from jumping off the needles during knitting. The clothes pins are holding down the end of the yarn at the very beginning of each triangle; the butterfly hangs from the last knitted stitch in each colour. The other things hanging off the knitting are claw weights, which help keep the entire knitted piece on the machine. 

And here's a video on how to knit intarsia on a machine. It's not rocket science, but it does take concentration. I started with the fronts on the theory that they would ease me into the process (half the width, half the number of different colours in a single row). The photo above is of the back. Even after knitting both fronts without serious incident (that I now recall), I found I could only knit two rows of triangles (total of 32 intarsia rows) at a time before needing a break. 

Long story short, Ravelry tells me that I started this project on August 29 and finished it on December 25, 2021. 

It took forever to weave in all the ends on the back of the knitting. 

Once the ends are woven in, the back is almost as neat as the front.

And now for some finished photos.

With a pipe. Because male models in knitting patterns are often holding a pipe, if not a gun of some kind. 

You can readily see the hexagon quilt-like pattern in the back. 

It has pockets!

I made a wedding dress!

It's a few days after the wedding - of my only son to his long-time sweetie - who wore the dress I made for her. Actually, she wore both dresses that I made - the "practice dress" (she changed for the reception) and the "real thing". So I am giving myself full marks for client satisfaction.

I am still processing the whole experience. But you only want to know about the sewing, right?

Initially, when I signed up for this project after finding out that future DIL was going to be 30 weeks pregnant on her wedding day, we were thinking that an easy to wear knit dress would possibly work. I made a number of inquiries and found out that The Fabric Room had white silk jersey in stock. So that's why we went there. Also (confession) I had wanted to visit this store for many years and had never had an opportunity or an excuse to do so. 

Of course, the jersey wasn't quite right, but we found this interesting silk-viscose blend, very drapey but with a bit of body. Up close, it is almost a tiny mesh and I would say it is semi-sheer. It would clearly need to be lined and initially we thought a coloured China silk could work. We bought some pretty red fabric. But to be safe, we also bought some fine white cotton batiste, which ended up in the lining of this dress. 

I'll make her something else out of the many metres of red silk!

To make this dress a bit more fancy, I used a tiny remnant of silk (Shantung? - from a friend's stash) for the bodice insert, topped by a pretty lace (from the same friend's stash) applied to a skin-tone mesh. There is also a band of lace on the "waist" band. 

I didn't even try to pad my dress form for the baby bump, as you can see.

I decided to use the same cotton/lycra knit fabric as in the practice dress as the underlayer for the bodice front. Because I was confident about the pattern (thank you practice dress) I thought I could construct the bodice in a more straightforward way.

However, this dress is both lined and partly underlined, which put all the complexity back into the sewing procedure.

I underlined the back bodice and the waistband with silk organza from stash. This added stability to the dress fabric in areas that would be stressed due to close fit. 

The entire dress, except the bodice front, is lined with cotton batiste. At DIL's request, I again made in-seam pockets, which I cut out of the cotton and inserted through an opening in the lining so that they ended up on the inside of the lining. If left between the fashion fabric and lining, they would have showed through. 

I had initially sewn exactly the same dimensions as the practice dress and had inserted some 2.5cm elastic in the front of the waistband. On a fitting a few weeks before the wedding, it was obvious I needed to let it out as much as possible, and the elastic was deemed uncomfortable. Out it came! (Her wish was my command.) 

My last technical challenge was the hem. I had added height to the front panels as well as width, but based on my experience with the practice dress I had cut all panels about 8cm shorter than the pattern. DIL was planning to wear flat shoes and the skirt was just too long. 

However, as a result of a combination of factors (very shifty fabric and the growing baby bump being the most important), when I finally had the opportunity to figure out the hem, I found I had only about 2cm to turn up in front and close to 10cm in the back. I was hemming this dress in the few days before the wedding at my mom's place, having brought a sewing machine, my serger and a good iron as well as all the tools I could imagine using. Luckily I had also thrown in the remainder of the fashion fabric.

My hem solution was to tear 10cm wide strips of the fabric and use them to face the hem. If I do say so myself, this worked brilliantly (although it took me an entire day).

This view is perfect to illustrate the back (back neck lowered a bit) and show that the hem has real heft and is quite even. I was very relieved to see this, I can tell you!

This ends the saga of the dress, but not all the wedding-related sewing. 

DIL had asked for a bib if there was fabric left over (there was!), explaining she was worried about the dress during the dinner. I didn't think it was fair for her to be the only one, so I made a bib for the groom as well. I found a free pattern on the internet. The bibs are structured due to a lining of the batiste fused to light batting. I decorated them with silk organza and a couple of buttons and they close with velcro. I think they turned out really cute.

Not sure what I'm going to make next but it might be for a small human. 

Mother-of-the-groom - that's me!

In between working on THE DRESS, I've also been making the dress I will wear to the wedding. It's my version of an OOP Vogue pattern designed by the late Patricia Jeanne Keay. 

I first saw this dress in 2010 in a Threads Magazine article. A version of that article (written by the designer) is on her website. The full article is on the magazine's website, if you have access to it. 

I instantly thought that the pictured celadon green linen dress was just about the most beautiful creation I had ever seen. Those embellishments! So unique.

Anyhow I didn't forget about the dress and when I saw this Vogue pattern published seven years later, I bought it instantly. But it has been languishing in my collection unused since then, waiting for a suitable occasion.

I decided that my son's wedding would qualify, so I got it out and did a muslin. The pattern has lining pieces that end in a level hem (at a high mini-skirt level) and I used them to check the fit. 

I found that the pattern, unlike the red version on the pattern envelope, but very much like the green version in the article, had an extremely wide and open neckline, with the shoulder "straps" set so wide that they would be of no use in actually holding the dress on the wearer's body. It was far too wide and open to fit me properly, or to be comfortable. 

I was able to adjust the front and back neck by different amounts to fix this problem. I took the back in more because it was generally too wide to fit me properly. The front only needed the neckline adjusted. 

Here's a snap of the adjusted pattern pieces. 

You can see the deeper "dart" reducing the overall width of the upper back piece on the left. 

I bought linen from Core Fabrics, plus matching Bemberg lining, and I'm very impressed with the quality of both. 

Looking at the photo of the back, I could have narrowed the back bodice a bit more, but it is OK.

This adjustment slightly changed the angle where the shoulder "straps" would attach. I had to further adjust this a tiny bit in the back. 

I'm calling them "straps" because they are way more interesting than the usual 2 dimensional strap found in a pattern. 

The bias piece (see photo at left) is sewn into a tube and then pleats are formed at different angles in the front and back. The result is a nicely 3D piece that cups the top of the shoulder. 

With my adjustments to narrow the neckline, the dress will be securely bra friendly. Win!

The other change I made to the pattern was to line the flounce, which Vogue instructs to leave unlined. I think the lining adds the right weight to the piece, which might have been flimsy in comparison to the rest of the dress. The upper part of the dress is lined with a mini-length version of the dress pieces. It also has a facing for the upper edges, which is applied to the top of the lining pieces. I found this a bit surprising, but it works.

I had lengthened the flounce slightly (about 2.5 cm) and cut the flounce lining a tiny bit shorter. Then I seamed the flounce lining to the flounce at the hem, and attached the upper edge at the dress/flounce seam by hand. This makes for a very smooth and completely invisible hem. 

Finally, you ask, what about the bodice embellishment? Isn't this the most important and interesting part of the entire garment?

Why yes of course it is! The Threads article focuses on how to make the skinny bias tendrils and make them curl, and to sew the 3D leaves/petals. I was interested to see that the pattern has a good amount of detail on this too, and in fact the pattern pieces for the leaves were slightly simplified. 

Kay's secret to sewing the tubes and turning them right side out is:

(1) To ensure the correct tube dimension, don't focus on the seam allowance width while sewing. Pay attention instead to the width of the tube itself. Simple but critical. 

(2) After sewing the seam use your serger to beef up the seam allowance with a narrow 3 thread stitch.

(3) Fasten the end of a good length of very strong thread to the seam allowance at one end of the tube piece with a secure knot. 

(4) Thread a darning needle with the other end of the thread and draw it through the tube.

(5) Pull on the thread while helping the end of the tube where the knot is tied to fold inside. Keep pulling gently until the knotted end appears at the other end of the tube. 

No further corsage needed!

Wedding prep - second instalment

So I made the "practice" dress based on my adjusted pattern. Short story - it needed a bit of adjustment, but basically worked very well.

The fabric is rayon challis. The "real" dress would be made from a silk/rayon blend that's very drapey, with a lining that was at that time still undetermined. We had bought some china silk in a rosy red, but also white cotton. 

Future DIL didn't want the crossover bodice of the original pattern so I adjusted the bodice to have two draped halves that would meet just above the underbust band, with a V shaped panel behind. 

It was a challenge to figure out the draped piece. I based it on the original pattern but adjusted it to remove the shoulder seam gathers as well as for the altered bodice configuration. 

The pattern has a princess seamed bodice under the draped front. In fact, it called for two layers under the draping - one is a base for the draping and the other is lining. I decided to use just one layer of fabric under the draped front, but made it as lining, that is with the wrong sides together.

I cut this under-bodice out of stretch knit on the theory that this, coupled with the draping, would adjust for bust expansion, if needed. 

I didn't have to change these pieces too much - the CF pieces only had to be altered to change the angle of the front neck.

I puzzled for far too long over construction steps. It's hard when nobody has figured this out for you ahead of time! I ended up finishing the bodice front neck and arm edges and attaching the V panel (which I figured might need adjustment) with hand stitching. I stupidly attached the back skirt panels to the back bodice and waistband before I attached the front bodice to the back, but I was smart enough to realize I had to wait to insert the zipper until after I sewed the shoulder seams (topology!). I hoped at the time to remember not to do the same with the real dress). 

As you can see in the above photos, the draped front was a bit too long (better than too short!) for the princess seamed bodice pieces once pleated into place. The excess was trimmed off later. 

The hugely expanded skirt front was pleated into the lower edge of the underbust band to match (sort of) the pleated bodice. I made the front of the underbust band into a casing for some elastic in case needed for future sizing issues. 

Also to assist in adjustments later, if needed, I did the side seams last. 

We hadn't seen the happy couple for a few weeks and things had evidently progressed by early May - the bump was a bit more than I was expecting for that point, to be honest. Luckily, there was still plenty of room in the front of the dress for further expansion, so it was all good.

We found that the V panel was too wide and too high. Thanks to my forward planning, it was easy to unpick and adjust. 

I did the hem while they waited, and waited, and waited! Yikes, the skirt hem is LONG (no extra cm were added below hip level). With the practice dress approved and delivered, I could move on to the real thing. 

To be continued ...

Well this is a surprise!

NB - posting was delayed while matters continued. Stay tuned for additional instalments!

My dear son is in a long-term relationship with a wonderful young woman - like, they have been living together for 10 years. Until recently, there was no talk of marriage, though their friends were happily walking down the aisle (or equivalent) and even producing babies. 

So we were of course delighted when they told us that they planned to marry this year. My future daughter in law broached, very timidly, the subject of me possibly sewing her wedding dress but initially I declined. Mostly, I thought it would be hard to sew such an important dress. I had reasons. She lives a 5 hour drive away, which would make fitting/consultations difficult. She isn't a sewer and hasn't routinely had anyone sew for her so conversations about garment style (patterns) divorced from a specific fabrication thereof are difficult. We don't speak the same language re garments. Mostly, getting it wrong would be horrific! 

She didn't argue with me, and very kindly invited me, along with her mother, to come wedding dress shopping. We did, soon after Christmas. We saw some things that looked promising but no decisions were made.

Weeks later, I asked if she had ended up buying any of the dresses we had seen. I was surprised to get no response. A few weeks after that, my son spilled the beans. She had bought a dress, but it wasn't going to fit, because she is also EXPECTING! Holy cow! All the family things are happening all at once, all of a sudden!

In this new circumstance, despite the dress issue being even more fraught, because SIZE and SHAPE are only to be guessed at months ahead, I offered to make the dress. Yikes! (Yes, I may be an idiot.)

My first task was to pad my dress form to get the approximately correct bust and upper body dimensions based on measurements taken at about 12 weeks. I have my fingers crossed that the bust will be close in size to this until the very end of pregnancy (after the wedding!). 

I found a quilt at the thrift store and draped a muslin cover (notice the separating zipper so I could get it on and off). I briefly thought of also padding for a baby bump but decided it would be unnecessary as well as kind of difficult to get right.

I started draping the fabric and got a positive reaction to this:

I bought this pattern to use as a base, although it will obviously require modification. 

As of mid-April, I was mulling over how much width and length I would need to add for the expanding belly. I decided to make the waistband narrower by about 5.5 cm so it would sit higher on the body. I also decided to build in stretch in the front (stretch fabric base and elastic in the waistband). A draping experiment using a pillow as simulation suggested I would need about 4 cm more length at CF in the skirt, plus the removed length from the original waistband - in total about 10 cm. Plus about 2 cm at CF to bring the line of the bodice up at the very centre. Fingers crossed!

Re the width, I measured the skirt front of a Burda Magazine maternity evening dress. It was 80 cm wide! I thought that might be excessive (?) so added "only" to make it about 74 cm. 

Thus, I got an adjusted pattern. Next step would be to cut out my muslin, which I had billed as a "practice dress". Wish me luck. 

Best sweater so far!

Why am I so happy with this sweater? Let me count the ways. 

1. It's cozy and warm.
2. I love the cables. 
3. It's better than the photo I used as inspiration.
4. It's exactly the size I wanted it to be.
5. Technically, I did a good job.

Proof of magenta threads!

Why is it cozy and warm? 

Because I used aran-weight yarn that's a blend of 50% wool and 50% alpaca. It's loosely spun, heathered yarn in a luscious turquoise that's threaded with magenta (which only becomes visible in bright light). 

This yarn came from my stash. My Ravelry notes indicate it was a birthday present from my husband, which means it was thrifted. It's Estelle Yarns Ultra Wool. Ravelry says this was a limited run that ceased production in 2010. Too bad, it's beautiful yarn!

What about those cables? How is it better than the inspiration?

My inspiration photo came from an ad. This is an extremely cheap acrylic number. While the look of it appeals to me, anything I made would be nicer than the original. The elements it had to include were - it had to be a bit oversized, have a deeply cabled yoke, and have cables that continued up into a high and otherwise ribbed collar. 

Some investigation revealed that the cables in the inspiration sweater were probably 5x5, which would be hard for me to knit on a knitting machine. This is because the needles are fixed in position and so you can't, as in hand knitting, squish the stitches together to cross a big number of them. There are ways to do it, but they are a little complicated. Plus, I lacked the tools (transfer tools with more than 3 prongs) to accomplish a 5x5 cable. So I looked elsewhere for a cable pattern I could use. 

I decided to knit a pattern of 3x3 cables. The chart came from the Harmony Guide to Machine Knitting Stitches, a great resource. 

I really like the bumpiness of this cable pattern. My yarn has great stitch definition, and I think the finished cables look even better than the photo in the Harmony Guide. 

This chart works because it creates an allover cabled texture that could continue up into the high neck. I realized I could place the cables so that I had 4 columns of cables (24 stitches in total) with 2 on either side of centre. These 4 columns line up to look (sort of) like braids, as in the inspiration sweater.

What about sizing?

Just slightly oversized - that was my goal. I made a sweater last year that fit just right. I seem not to have blogged about it (my bad). Here is a photo. (More details on my Ravelry project page.)

This sweater was knitted from yarn that was just a bit lighter in weight than the Estelle Ultra Wool, but it's still fairly thick. Its shape is super basic - it's a gansey. The front and back are rectangular and the sleeves have a very shallow cap. I added a gusset under the arm for better fit and comfort. 

Nevertheless it has a fairly deep round front neckline, which works well on me because I have a forward neck. 

I designed this sweater in Garment Designer, so I had the pattern pieces. All I had to do was adjust for a different gauge. 

Here's a photo of the 2 sweaters - they are almost exactly the same size! 

Last but not least - the technical details

I knitted swatches of stockinette, ribbing and the cables. The gauges for each were different. 

The difference between the stockinette and the cables was dramatic. I knit the cables at a bigger stitch size to make it easier to cross the stitches, but still, in order to have no difference in width between the cabled yoke and the rest of the front, I had to add 20 stitches across the front! I did this increase using a garter bar, which allowed me to take all the stitches off the needles and put them back in a different, more spread out configuration. 

The added stitches are completely invisible in the finished piece, which is, as intended, completely straight up the sides. 

I also had to calculate the length of the yoke using the cable specific gauge. I made a separate pattern piece in Garment Designer just for the yoke. 

Because the gauges were so different, I decided not to do shaping for the neckline or shoulders on the machine. This was because shaping would interfere with the cabling and so I would end up with a lot of uncabled stockinette, including all those extra stitches. They would flare out, probably in an unattractive way. 

To avoid flaring in the neck and shoulder areas, I decided (first time ever) to use a cut and sew technique. I took the centre 24 stitches off on waste yarn, and knitted the cabled pattern straight up on either side of these stitches to the length needed for the highest part of the shoulder. 

Then I rehung the centre 24 stitches and continued the cable pattern up for the high neck. I added a stitch on either side for seaming. 

I then used thread basting to identify the lines for the shoulder slope and side neck shaping. I ran 2 lines of straight stitch along the basting to secure the knitting. 

The back of the collar is knitted in rib, which has (luckily) a similar row gauge to the cables. I figured out the number of ribs I needed to get a piece that would be 85% the length of the neckline, minus the centre 24 stitches. The rectangular piece was knitted with open stitches at the top and bottom, as I had decided to attach it to the neckline with hand stitches, and wanted flexibility to rip back a row if needed to make the upper edges of the back collar even with those of the ribbed portion. 

At left, the collar was sewn on. That orange yarn is the waste yarn that secures the top and bottom loops. 

I didn't cut anything until after I had attached the back and front at the shoulders, and attached the back collar. 

I decided to further secure the cut edge by encasing it in bias strips of tricot (similar to Seams Great) from my extensive sewing stash. the tricot on one side using a zig zag stitch, then cut ... very carefully ... before encasing the narrow edge in the tricot with another line of stitching. It isn't particularly beautiful on the inside, but it works and I think it is secure. 

The hand-stitched collar looks pretty fabulous, if I do say so myself. 

I used a backstitch. It looks like a line of purl bumps.

In the end, the back and front of the collar were just the right heights, and I did a similar back stitch finish on the open loops at the top of the collar, all the way around. 

The back hem is a bit longer than the front, and there's a little slit at the side seam. 

The only thing I'm not 100% satisfied with is that the top edge of the cables at the collar curls a bit. I will live with that for a bit before deciding whether it needs fixing. 

Ridiculous pants (and matching jacket!)

 Without further ado, here are the pants I made to go with my garden camo jacket.

They may never be seen in combination again, so enjoy!

Fly front - with snap!

This is yet another iteration of the Shop Pants from Open Studio Patterns. I mean, once you adjust a pattern to fit, why not make it to death?

There are lots of details, but they are totally invisible.

Topstitching!

Pockets!

Fly front!

As the linen fabric is a bit scratchy and underlining helps with wrinkling, I underlined the main body pieces with the cotton lining fabric from the original curtains. I also used the cotton for the pocket bags and to face the  waistband.

They look good with this extremely monochromatic top. Which was the entire plan. 

I continue to tweak the pattern. After assembling, I scooped the crotch a bit for more sitting room (maybe 1cm). I also added fusible stay tape on the upper edge of the waistband to shorten the upper edge (eased waistband as I was fusing) because it needed to be a bit more curved than it was. 

I didn't adjust the upper edge of the front and back pieces but I think I could handle a tiny bit more height in the centre back. Like maybe .5cm.

I didn't do any further adjustments to the paper pattern. (Hope I remember to check this before making again...)

At the waist, I installed a snap closure (because I could not make a buttonhole with the available machinery in the thickness of this waistband). 

I used a green plastic snap leftover from when my son (now mid-30s) was a toddler. They go in with the red tool as pictured in the following photos. (This is 100% written about so I will be able to refer back the next time I get a hankering to put one of these snaps onto a garment. My blog is my external memory.)

The first step is to punch a tiny hole in the overlap and underlap in the correct places. I marked a point on the outside of the waistband (overlap) with a marking pencil, then punched a hole in that layer. Holding the waistband closed as it would be when worn (zip up), I punched the underlap layer through the hole in the overlap layer. I have a Dritz snap plier tool, which didn't work directly with these snaps (different brand). However, it works fine for hole punching!

At left are the tools and instructions that came with the snaps. 

To apply these snaps you need to hammer the bits together on a firm surface. You don't want rebound and you want to use a decently heavy hammer. No messing about!

To apply the the visible part, place the plastic button face down in the little cup. Put the RIGHT SIDE of the overlap side of the garment against it so that the centre of the button, which pokes up a tiny bit, is visible through the little hole previously punched in the correct place.

Then place the socket (female part of snap) over it, so it is centred.

Place the pointy bit of the red tool into the socket. It will snap down into the hole.

Give the assembly a good few whacks with the hammer. 

For the underlap side, reverse the round disc so the flat part faces up and put the tall part down on it.

Put the WRONG SIDE of the underlap down so the tall part (post) pokes through the previously punched hole. 

Put the male bit of the snap (the stud - truly the technical term!) overtop the post and press down. It will sort of snap onto the post. 

Take the cup end of the red tool and place over the stud. 

Give it a good few whacks. 

Done!