- Today's modern woman has a wardrobe of pants that take her everywhere from her place of work to the exercise class.

Today, we will explore our sixth capsule wardrobe piece, the pant, and make one pattern work in many different ways.

That old elastic styled pant is history, but the comfort of that pant is still with us.

We'll show you a waistband that is flawless and we'll get those pants fitting perfectly with just a dart or two.

And then you'll learn how to adjust the styling, so much pants fun, today on Fit 2 Stitch.

(gentle electronic music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Vogue Fabrics, Colorado Fabrics, Quality Sew and Vac, Sew Town, Tulsa, Oklahoma and Fort Smith, Arkansas, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, Bennos Buttons, All Brands, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Clutch Nails.

- When my son's best friend was really excited, he used to shake his hands like this, and that's what I'm so excited about, we're gonna do pants.

And these pants we're gonna get to fit like, you are just gonna go like this as well because your pants are gonna fit so well.

We're gonna go exactly through the process that I want you to go through.

We're gonna use two samples, two fabrics, knit, woven, so that what you will do is decide whether you're doing knit or woven and do exactly what we're doing.

I've done this for many, many years, I had a client who years ago said to me, "I love the way you fit these pants on me."

She said, "Just promise that when I die, "you'll turn me butt side up so that everyone will see "how beautiful my pants fit."

And I said, "Promise."

So every trick and whatever I've learned over the years we're gonna apply to Jeannie and Cindy today, and you can duplicate them and do exactly the same.

So, what we want to do is make sure that we just take a pant front, a pant back, and I'm gonna ask Jeannie and Cindy some questions, and they're just, you're gonna listen to what they did and you're gonna do the same thing.

How'd you start?

- I started by measuring a pair of-- - [Peggy] And you have a knit pant?

- I have a knit pant.

- [Peggy] Okay, perfect.

- I measured a pair of store-bought yoga pants and used that circumference plus a little bit more, because those yoga pants had spandex in them, so they could fit a little bit tighter, I didn't want these to be that tight on me.

- I think that's a good point, too, because you're always better to go a little bit bigger, 'cause you can always make them smaller.

Just don't go too big, because then it changes everything else inside.

- Correct.

- [Peggy] All right, so you got to the size and you're happy with where you got?

- Yes.

- Okay, perfect, so remember, the circumference is where we always start.

So, how'd you start, Cindy?

- I took a tape measure and went around my hips and then sat down.

- Okay-- - Because they're woven-- - Now you're in a woven, okay.

- They're woven, so I needed a little bit of ease in my pants.

- And there's a big difference between Jeannie and Cindy, because Jeannie doesn't need ease, because her fabric, being knit, will just give her the ease she needs, where Cindy, my mother had a pair of pants we called them her stand up only pants, because they were woven and she had no ease, and she had no room to sit down.

And that is not a good thing, to stand the whole entire evening.

So we've gotta keep that in mind with as we fit them, but our pattern, as far as front and back, doesn't have to be any different.

It's just up to us as to where we want our starting point to be.

So, Jeannie, with our knit, let's go ahead and we've got them elastic-sized, 'cause you've just got elastic around the top, they're yoga pants, and just for our own information, what characterizes a yoga pant is it's a knit pant, and it has a two-inch wide band across the top, it's just a contemporary styling pant.

It used to be our grandma's old elastic pant, it was kind of all bunched up around and it looked like a sack tied in the middle, so these days we've just kinda smoothed all that out and it's a one-to-one ratio on our body, if you go too small it's just not gonna be a positive, if you go too big it looks just baggy, it looks terrible.

Okay, so you've got them pulled up to where you want them to be?

- Yes.

- I'm gonna start in the back.

And I would recommend that you always start in the back.

I'm gonna turn you this way right here.

And boy, you don't need a lot on this.

I hate to say that, isn't that bad?

Remember that every time you do them, always start at the hip line.

Whenever you're fitting pants, start at the hip line.

And keep in mind, I'm gonna make this analogy to cup sizing in the front.

If I put on a D cup bra on a A cup woman, whatever the bust size does not take up, it hangs down below.

We call that a cowl neck, and that's a joke, it's not really.

But the rear end can be the same.

We could have B cup, C cup and D cup rear ends, but because we don't, we have to actually change the depth of that pant, so you can see that before I take that dart, there's wrinkles and those wrinkles are angular, but after I take that dart, boy it really just pulls that up and nicely hangs across the back.

So that's what I want.

I don't want a dart in my final product.

And because I don't want a dart in my final product, I'm actually going to take this dart and go all the way to the side seam, and when I go all the way to the side seam, I actually don't have to stitch it in the final garment.

I still have to stitch it, obviously, because what I would recommend is once you trace off your pattern and you have your pattern on the cloth, you make your pant, I would use the pant as your tissue.

I don't think I would go back to the tissue, it's your call, today I'm going to, I'm gonna show you the changes we made, but I would go ahead and just make those changes right on the tissue.

And that just falls beautifully.

If you decide you want a little closer leg, you can take that in as well.

Remember, these are knit, and however you want them to hang is up to you.

I'm gonna give you some styling choices at the table a little bit later, but for now, I'm just gonna bring that in because remember when you come in on the leg, you'll look slimmer back here.

Too wide a leg is gonna make you look a little heavier.

Now I always say the wider the hem, the wider you'll look.

So turn around to the front, those look beautiful in the back, they just hang really nicely.

You don't need anything, it's amazing, you're done.

That pattern looks beautiful.

All right Miss Cindy, how are you, these are woven now.

- Woven.

- Okay, still with woven, I'm gonna turn you to the back, I'm gonna always start and see if you notice that when I take this, there's really not that much wrinkling when I get to the bottom, but there's still this angular fold over there.

I'm gonna take away some of this fullness in the leg, do you like that much fullness, did you purposely get that, or did it just kinda come with the pattern?

- It came with the pattern, I don't like to have that full a leg.

- Okay, perfect.

So I'm gonna take it out, if that's okay.

- [Cindy] That's great.

- And I'm gonna show you an easy way to do this, and I would recommend you do it even before you start to drape the pant.

So as you take this out, just blend it right up to the hip size, you chose your hip size 'cause you measured some pants you had and you measured some pants you liked, correct?

- And I also measured my own circumference and sat down.

- So that's an interesting thing, a lot of us when we do measure our circumference and sit down, of a pair of pants we like, or whatever we're using, we don't necessarily go back and measure the leg itself.

And that's okay, it's not a big deal, 'cause I can change the styling later, but I just want you to be aware, from the crotch of the pant up is almost like a different world that's going on from the crotch down.

And I'll illustrate that, like I said, a little bit later.

All right, so once I've got the circumference fitted and you've got the crotch where you want it to be-- - [Cindy] I do.

- I'm just gonna take this nice little dart right there.

And remember just, with every size and with every person, this dart's gonna be in a little different place, it's gonna be a little different amount, and that is simply because I want it to be at the fullest part of the rear end, and that's where it's gonna react the best.

And the reason this happens is very logical, it's when I am making a skirt, because I only have five basic pieces, I have the bodice front, the bodice top, bodice front, bodice back, skirt front, skirt back, and sleeve, and everything, every garment comes from those five pieces.

So it's very important, as I make the pant, to recognize where does it come from, and it comes from the skirt.

And so the skirt is slashed at the hip line, it is opened up, but because it's opened in ready to wear to a random amount, I just, you know, I never know where it's going to be.

The best reason I can tell you for making up a muslin is because I can't make this change after the pant is done, I'm changing the angles, and the whole entire pant is suspended from the crotch.

So to get that crotch in the right place is really important.

I can then fiddle with the sides, I can take the circumference in, or I can do lots of different things with this pant, just remember, the less circumference I have, the less mobility I have.

So as I come in and restrict the knee and the fullness around the knee a little bit, I also restrict movement.

Now, remember earlier when we talked about jackets and armholes and sleeves, we talked about shortcutting.

And the way to shortcut a jacket was to measure something that you liked that had a circumference for the sleeves, so that I knew what I liked.

Pants are the same way.

If I go in and measure a pair of pants that I like, I can shortcut the process of trial and erroring this, and I can actually go from one size at the hip to another size at the leg, and that's the kind of thing I want to show you so that you can make your best guess before you make the muslin, and then as you make the muslin, you're kind of testing out, did I do it right here, did I do it right here, did I make the right decisions as I go along the way, does that make sense?

- It makes sense, yes.

- All right, so let's turn around to the front, the back looks absolutely beautiful.

The front I've just got a little, funky thing there, we're gonna take care of that.

Easy to do, and really all that is is where the crotch of the pant and the crotch of the body are not aligning, and so one gets to be a little wrinkly.

So I'm just gonna make a dart, and it's usually right in the curve of that crotch.

And because the crotch sews to itself, I don't have to change any other piece, so that I don't have to actually stitch it in the final pant, I'm just gonna bring it right out to the side seam.

So Miss Cindy's gonna get a little dart right across the front.

I'll never forget one time I was trying on a pair of pants, and the lady said to me, I said, "Well I don't really like these kinda funky things "in the front," she said, "Oh, it's supposed to look like that."

No, it's not supposed to look like that.

So I don't know about you, but I just don't want smiles coming out from that place.

- No.

- All right?

- All right.

- Perfect, okay, so I'm gonna go to the table and we're gonna make those changes so that you can really see and make sure you understand what I did to that cloth.

All right, we'll start with Jeannie.

Lay out again, the front to the back, and I have a tendency to want to put them to where they're facing each other, just to where I don't get confused, I made a little dart against Jeannie's hip line.

I'm not measuring exactly where it is and exactly how big it is, but you'll want to do that.

Remember that I have two options.

I can use the pant, I can make the changes, literally sew them, put the pant back on, and make sure I like them, and I can use the pant as my tissue, or I can come back and change the tissue and call it good, and that's the only change I made on Jeannie's.

And that sews to itself, so I'm done.

That was way too easy.

All right, then on, now Jeannie might be different if she goes to do a different fabric.

But this'll give her a pretty good guide as to what she wants to do.

With Cindy what we did is we did a dart across the hip line here, and so we'll do one there, and then we actually had a dart in the front also.

And we slimmed in the leg.

But actually on her, I'm gonna show you that on a different pair of pants, so I'm not gonna worry about that just yet, I'm actually just gonna change from the crotch up, because from the crotch up is fit, crotch down is styling.

And that's it, it's very easy to see, but again, difficult to measure, because how would you measure those exact instances and know where they change and all those other things.

All right, so I just wanna show some leg styling.

I'm gonna put this tissue off to the side, and I wanna put this lengthwise, because I really want you to see this.

I get this question over and over again, this is a very easy thing to do, because so many of you say well, I have a pair of pants and I really like them, but they don't fit well.

Now, what I, it sounds like you're saying two opposite things, but I totally understand what you're saying.

What you're saying is you like the styling, but they don't fit.

And so where we need to understand that distinction is is at the crotch.

So I like the width of the leg, I like the knee, I like the thigh and the circumference of that, but the crotch length, the crotch depth, and all of that is wrong.

So keep in mind that that's what we fixed.

I'm gonna overlap, I'm gonna turn these, I'm sorry, I'm gonna put the side seams together.

And I'm gonna overlap the side seams just a little bit, because that would be our styling.

Then, I'm gonna take this pair of pants, and I'm gonna say these are one of my favorites, we're just gonna pretend here, and I'm gonna lay them so that I can see the styling.

And I actually don't even have to lay them on top.

But the first place I'm gonna start is at the hem.

And if I overlap my seam allowances there and measure that this is 15 inches, that's the circumference at the hem.

And if I measure my hem, I find out this is only 12.

So that's three inches of difference, and I've got four seams to make that difference.

So three inches divided into four is gonna give me one-and-a-half, three-fourths.

So each of these seams, I'm gonna take in three-fourths, three-fourths, three-fourths, and three-fourths.

All right?

Now I know that if I start to change that hem, that hem and this hem are gonna be the same.

Now, the only reason I kind of lay them in the same place is so that I'm kind of measuring the same place on my pants, to make sure the next place I go is halfway between so I can kinda get some relevance between what this measurement is versus this measurement.

And then again, I'm gonna overlap that seam allowance and I'm gonna measure straight across to see roughly what the knee is, the knee is measuring 16, and my actual knee is measuring 14.

So you can see the hem is much wider, but I'm actually getting really close as I go here.

So there's two inches of difference there, I'm gonna bring in a half-inch here, a half-inch here, half-inch here, and a half-inch over there.

Because what I'm gonna start to do is connect my dots, and really, all I'm doing here is playing dot-to-dot.

And that's all my styling is, is playing dot-to-dot.

I'm the person who gets to decide what styling I like, nobody can be around to tell me my styling is wrong.

My fit, when you're talking about crotch length and crotch depth, there's rules that apply to that, but when we translate itself into styling, I get to do whatever I want.

Let's come up to the top and just do one more time so that you understand that, again I'm gonna overlap, I'm gonna measure across where that is, it comes up to be roughly 20 inches, 22 I think it was, I measured my pant leg and my pant leg is 22, 24, 24, I'm sorry, I read that wrong.

So I'm gonna take off just a little bit, but I'm gonna take it all from the inseam right here, because in this particular pattern where you can see it kinda juts up, I'm just gonna take that away.

And that will do it.

Again, if you're not sure, just make up that sample.

And don't be afraid to be wrong and don't be afraid to try.

I want you to notice the inseam of that pant.

On a pant that's fairly fitted, you'll see that that will follow a French curve, and I would recommend you duplicate that shaping.

It's really beautiful on the inside of a leg to duplicate that shaping.

And that would contrast if I did a straight angle line.

And you can see with a straight angle line I'll have all this extra in there, and that's not a good look.

So keep that there, I can take that same exact shaping right into the amount I took below it and just make that a continuous pass.

Here what I can do, and you can see where I brought it in here, I can bring that right up to the original place on the hip line, and my styling is exactly the same as what I love in my ready to wear pants.

Except my ready to wear pants cost a couple hundred dollars.

That's silly.

Okay, so let's put this away, we've got our styling down, both of our ladies have remade their pants, and so I wanna take a look at them, because I just wanna see what they've done.

It was their homework assignment, so let's see how they are.

Okay, like, those are gorgeous.

- Thank you.

- Those are, do they feel good?

- They feel wonderful.

- Turn around.

Wow.

Okay, so no one would get a pair of pants like this and say I don't like those.

And besides, there is such a little moment like this when you did it all by yourself, it's just really fun.

- [Jeannie] Yes.

- Yes?

- [Jeannie] Yes.

- Yes.

Okay, so Cindy, what she did is she had made the jacket and we got to look at the jacket a little while ago, you made a matching pair of pants, they're really beautiful, turn around, do you mind?

Wow.

Just wonderful.

And again, would you do it again?

- [Cindy] I would.

I would definitely make more suits.

- [Peggy] And more pants, and-- - [Cindy] And more pants.

- And again, it doesn't matter fabric, we can switch them out, we can change them, we can go to the yoga pant, thank you ladies.

In fact, what I'm gonna do is show you some ways to get to that yoga pant.

So keep in mind that we can do, there's so many variations that we can do, this is just gonna be fun.

So the first thing women say to me is, "I gotta have pockets.

"I need pockets."

So okay, fine, I'll give you pockets.

So in this particular case, I'm just gonna show you the steps to make a pocket, because you're gonna just take that same pant you've done.

And step one, I'm going to put the pants together, and I'm literally gonna use the French curve.

And that French curve will make a wonderful pocket because you see there's the curve right there.

And when I do that, it will work much easier, I'm gonna cut it away, I'm gonna take three layers and put them together.

So my three layers are the pocket itself, the next pocket, you can see that's on top, and then this is my pants.

And I'm gonna cut those two layers the same.

You can see here they're gonna be exactly the same.

Then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna cut away just the two layers, I'm gonna put those together, and I'm gonna cut those two layers away.

And then I've sewn them together.

Once I've sewn them, I'm gonna bring this to the outside, and you can see that what it's done is it's finished that edge.

Then I put this on the back side of that, I sew all that together, and that's what creates that beautiful pocket.

Is that the fastest pocket we've ever made?

I just want you to understand the parts so that you can add any pocket you decide you want to anywhere you want to, and the kind of pocket you want to as well.

But just a warning, when you do a knit pant, if you try to do a slashed pocket, which is the kind that is like, six inches long and it runs along the side of the pant, it'll have a tendency to pull in a knit pant, and that's because sometimes our pants have negative ease, and so that knit won't relax like a woven fabric will.

So let's go to the sewing machine, I wanna show you a couple of contemporary waistbands and some that are absolutely wonderful.

And what I've noticed is anytime I pick up a waistband and I really enjoy the pant, the pant is so expensive.

But these waistband methods are really easy to do.

So besides the typical yoga pant with the two inch wide waistband, I'm just gonna take and raise the pant those two inches.

So the yoga pant is cut all the way to the waist, two inches taken away for the waistband, so it equals what the regular pant is.

So that's what I've got here.

Now, you don't have to keep the pant at your waist.

You can make it lower, you can make it wherever you want to be.

In this particular case, this is gonna be a finish for a waistband, what they're doing today is they're literally just taking the band, they're sewing it in a circle, and they're sewing the band to the right side of the pant.

And so I'm just gonna do just a little section of that.

So that you can kind of see what happens and what the finished garment looks like.

And when I do that, and I fold that to the inside, you don't even see the elastic waistband at all, it just sits there beautifully, and the elastic is actually all the way inside the pant so it's like my grandma's old elastic pans, except way better.

And let me show you another one real quick, because this is probably my favorite.

This time, I'm going to take, and I'm just doing a straight stitch is all I'm doing here.

This is just a little different alignment.

I'm still gonna sew my elastic in a circle, and I'm still gonna sew my pant in a circle, but this time, I'm going to sew, let me just kinda get this right lined up for you.

I'm going to sew the right side of the pant just toward a half-inch up from the bottom of the elastic.

So the two inches of the elastic will be up above, and there's the right side of the pant against the band.

And I'll show you this so you can see it in the finish what it looks like, and I still sew right on the same seam allowance that I normally would.

Now what happens when I turn this to the inside, I get just a little bit of elastic showing, and I just love that look, I think it's really contemporary, I think it's really polished, and I just really like it so I'm just gonna turn this to the inside again.

You're just gonna take the band, it goes up, I take the seam allowance but a little bit more, a quarter inch more, I take it and move it up a half inch from the edge of the elastic, and then I go ahead and stitch the seam allowance.

So then when I tuck it in, I've just got like a quarter inch showing there, and it goes all the way around, it's just a beautiful finish, the elastic does not have to be secured down, simply because I've got my body holding that elastic in place.

So don't, I think it's kind of almost our knee-jerk reaction to want to secure that elastic somewhere, but I don't have to, because my body is what will hold that elastic in place.

One other thing I want to show you, when you come to yoga pants, remember our yoga pant is characterized by this two-inch wide elastic, don't sew through the elastic.

I'd really recommend that I'd just go ahead and cut my fabric just a little bit wider to clear that elastic, I put pins in there so that I'm not sewing through it, and then when I go and attach it together, I don't sew through the elastic.

That keeps your elastic free and clear and it's so much easier to wear and use when that elastic is free.

It'll give a little bit better.

Andy Warhol has said, "I want to die with my blue jeans on."

Next time on Fit 2 Stitch, we'll show you how to get those jeans fitted so well that you and Andy will be buddies.

Join us.

(gentle piano music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Vogue Fabrics, Colorado Fabrics, Quality Sew and Vac, Sew Town, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Fort Smith, Arkansas, Kai Scissors, Sew Steady, Bennos Buttons, All Brands, Cynthia's Fine Fabrics, and Clutch Nails.

To order a four DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch series seven, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.