Where Fashion Meets Fantasy: Trouser 3

This week i again bought the fabric, i was instructed to obtain the cheapest fabric as people had little money, i went over to walthamstow where i found this tweed at 1.65 pm so bought 2 metres for everyone.

Making

As i had concentrated mainly on experimentation with the fabric upto now, i felt for the last trousers i would concentrate firstly, mainly on the cut and secondly on making the most technically well presented piece to date.

I wanted to use fabric that would hold its shape well, as i felt this tweed wouldnt do that i teamed it with denim.

One of the most successful ideas ive had through this module is splitting the trouser block into 3 from trouser 1 and changing the idea each week, so i again followed this theme.

I had the idea of taking the straight leg block and adding a curve in, from this initial idea i began researching, and getting a feel for whats around. Looking at Ralph Laurens AW12 collection i found a similar, subtler version of my idea

Ralph Lauren AW12

I also looked at John Galliano who has produced pieces i found inspirational

I used the pattern pieces for previous weeks, but combined the top panel with the centre panel, to gain the curved i measured the pattern pieces, found the middle i then measured out 20cm's and used my varyform curve to get a nice even line. Then i cut the bottom leg pieces in tweed.

I then pattern cut the waistband and began overlocking my trousers, this is the first time ive ever used an overlocker, it took a while to get used to but i think it gives a much more professional finish.

This week i also challeneged myself to produce a fly front zipper, i tried reading how to do it but struggled to get my head around it so instead to guide myself i looked and followed a fly front ive cut out a pair of jeans for my garment file. After hours of staring at it! I went through it step by step, i found it really useful and i am really pleased with my finished zip, although i found it a real challenge!

Finishing off fly front zip

After looking at garments with fly front most of them were finished off with a button on the waistband, i decided this would be a good time to try and do a buttonhole. I had put off doing this as i felt it was quite challenging but after focusing on it, it was quite simple to do, i used the buttonhole foot on my machine, measured the width of my button and the machine did the rest, simple!

Improvements

To be honest, i am very pleased with my garment, to improve i could source the same colour overlocking thread to bring my garment together more.

Also im not sure how it happened but when i had sewn the majority of my waistband on i realised it was a little too short, and i had to add a piece on, in future i should pin the whole piece on to make sure it fits.

Other Findings;

How well did it work as a garment?

I feel this all round is my biggest achievement to date, the combination of the shape, different fabrics and the technical level i have achieved, makes it work well as a garment.The two criticisms i have are, i did consider interfacing the denim as i thought it would hold the shape better but iwas afraid i would ruin what i had achieved so far, in heinsight i wish i had. Also, because of the shape ive added i lost some of the fit.

Is it fashion?

From my research i feel it is fashion as similar things are being produced, i also feel its quite innovative making it fashionable.

What was the fabric?

Cotton Denim

Tweed - Wool mix

How much did you use

Half a metre of tweed

1 metre of denim

How much did it cost?

Tweed - 1.65pm

Denim - 5.99pm

where was it sourced?