Army green Gingers #5

I made another pair of Ginger jeans.  I've had army green jeans in my head since last winter, but I only found the fabric (cotton/lycra bottom weight from FabricMart) back in July.  It went on sale after I'd packed up my sewing room, so I ordered it and then threw it into the shipment.

These are a size 16 View A, like all my Gingers.  After messing a bit with the pattern over my last few pairs, I went back to the modifications that I used on my very first pair (which is still my favorite and most worn) to reduce the back wrinkles. I sewed the inseam at 1/4" and the outseam at 1" - this greatly reduces the back leg wrinkles that I have if I sew both inseam and outseam at 5/8".  While this modification produces the best results for me, it's still not perfect.  On this pair in particular, I find that my outseam is a little bit too far back, and the inseam skews a little to the front.  This is also true (though to a lesser extent) on my first pair of Gingers, and I'm not really sure what to do about it at this point.

View A is the stovepipe version, not the skinny-leg version.  I've always used it because I have larger calves and I guess I didn't trust the skinny pattern to not be too tight.  This means that every time I sew the jeans, I have to slim down the legs from scratch.  I did make skinny leg modifications to my pattern pieces this time, but I really should have done it the first time, as the first jeans are still my favorite leg shape.  These didn't turn out exactly the same.

In addition to this modification, like on my all my Gingers, the front rise is shortened, the yoke is raised in the back, the back rise is scooped out and the center back seam is taken in at the top. And, like three of my other pairs of Gingers, I modified these to be pull-on jeans without a zipper fly.  As I've noted in all of my other pull-on jean blog posts, I really love this modification.  It raises the rise a bit, sucks me in, and is just so much more comfortable than a button and zippered fly.  Plus it's faster to sew, and I never wear my shirts tucked in, so there's really no downside.

I wanted to be able to dress these pants up with heels and a blazer for work, so I decided to do all my topstitching with matching thread. I briefly thought about doing welt pockets, and then decided against it, to save time. But now that I've actually worn these to work, I do wish I had done the welts.

I wore the pants for three days with pinned-up hems, taking in seams as the fabric relaxed and going back and forth on the length. Finally I despaired of getting them to fit perfectly and topstitched and hems.  Skinny jeans were probably not the best use of this fabric, which seems particularly prone to bagging out in the knees.  I'm still not certain about the hems. When I first wore them after hemming, I thought maybe they were a bit too short.  But then when I wore them to work with heels (as in these photos), I ended up turning the hems up inside the pants about 3/4".  Maybe I need to hem them shorter? I think they work ok with flats the way they are (as in the photos here with flats, where the hems are not turned in).  To be honest, I find skinny jean hemlines baffling, so I'll probably just leave them as is, and turn them in when I wear them with heels as shown.

And that is all I have to say about these pants. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!