[Jeanna]

I am making the after school pants and have encountered a problem…I have retraced my pattern pieces to make sure that they are all the same size as drafted and they are. My issue is that the “side front Upper piece” after being joined with the “side front lower piece” extends a full 1/2 above the “pants front piece” when pinned together…I can trim it away but it bothers me to have to do that…has anyone else encountered this issue. I’m not a novice and I have retraced my steps several times and come up with the same issue.

Thanks!

[Mama_Knowles]

I have made three pairs and have not had this issue. Are you sure that maybe you traced the wrong line on one pattern piece? Could you maybe take a picture and put on flicker of the problem?

~Sharon~

[Sarvi]

Jeanna, what size are you making?

[Nicole]

I have made size 2t and size 8 and there was a little ‘creepage’ that needed to be trimmed but I put that down to possibly sewing inaccurate seams and the slippery cord I was using.

http://fiveandcounting-motherof5.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/after-school-frolics-part-two.html if you scroll down you can see I had a wee gap but definitely not 1/2 inch.

How frustrating for you though.

[Tamara]

Are you using corduroy? I have found with making them in corduroy that if I sew from the pants top instead of from the leg cuff I stand a better chance of them meeting up with just a slight trimming of less than a quarter inch. I suggest pinning closer and more often to help with the wriggling from the corduroy – that is if of course you are using this fabric.

I hope this helps. They are terrific pants. I have made them in sizes 8-12 and an enlarged version.

[mcholley1]

Isn’t that pattern piece curved on the top? Did you flip the sides? I think it is higher where it joins the back than the front. I’ve done that before.

[Inder]

Did you maybe confuse front and back on the side piece? I did that with one of the pairs I made and ran into that problem. I never fixed it, just trimmed, and the final product was not noticeably different, but it did get me scratching my head a bit during assembly until I realized that there is a front and back to that side piece.

[Erin S]

I’m having the same issue identified above. The first time it happened, I thought it was the pattern so I reprinted and re-assembled those pieces and tried again. Then I saw this post and figured maybe I somehow hadn’t matched the notches properly (so had attached the side panel backward) even though I was pretty sure I had. So I tried a third time and was really careful on the notches and still ended up with the different lengths. Here’s an image of the pattern pieces with notches lined up (with 0.5″ overlap where applicable) demonstrating what I mean. I know that tonnes of people have made this pattern without the issue, but I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. The pants still look great when finished and are definitely my favourite pants I’ve made my daughter, but it does affect the length on my super tall daughter. Any ideas?

• This reply was modified 9 years ago by Erin S.

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[Sarvi]

I think I might have the paper version of that pattern. Could you let me know what size you’re making and I’ll measure my pieces and see if they add up to the same as yours?

[Erin S]

That would be great, thanks! This is a 3T.

[Sarvi]

ok, give me a few minutes, brb

[Sarvi]

Hm, mine seem to be adding up, but I’m not confident I’m measuring the same bit where you’re having trouble. It’s your piece 8, “pants front” that’s half an inch shorter than the combined pieces 6 and 11, “lower side panel” and “upper side panel”?

[Sarvi]

Also, I am not the world’s foremost authority on addition and subtraction with fractions 🙂

[Erin S]

When I line up all of the notches and match the pattern pieces, there’s a 13/16″ difference when 8 (pants front) and 9 (pants back) are lined up (with 8 being shorter), and then if I line up 10/11 (upper side panel/lower side panel) and 9 (pants back), 10/11 is 7/16″ longer than 9. So the difference between the pants front and the side becomes… 1.5″ or so? (Sorry, I’m metric so the fractions here are messy for me!) Hopefully that makes sense.

(Just in case it is a printing issue somehow, my upper side panel (piece 10) plus lower side panel (piece 11) are 20 5/8″ (with the 1/2 overlap between piece 10 and 11), the pants back (piece 9) is 20 3/16″, and then the pants front (piece 8) is only 18 5/8″.)

Thanks so much for looking into this for me!

• This reply was modified 9 years ago by Erin S.

[Sarvi]

Sorry, I don’t know where that 6 came from — “lower side panel” is number 10 for me as well.

For 10+11 I got 20 5/8″ as well, along the longer edge (right edge of the pattern piece, with the double notches. For piece 9 I’m getting 20 1/16″, so 3/8″ difference — but I’m having to sort of eyeball where the stitching line is for the long edge which is a bit curved, half an inch from the edge. But we seem to be measuring the pieces pretty similarly? It’s a bit tricky for me to measure the front pants leg because it looks like there’s supposed to be a pocket piece there and I’m not too sure where that edge should hit.

Can folks who’ve made this size comment?