I’m trying to make myself a pair of shorts using Charlie. If these were a store-bought pair of pants I’d buy them in a heartbeat but since i’m making bespoke I figured I could get the fit a little better.
Side view; did I sew this wrong? Is the pocket seam supposed to lean forward like that? Or is this a “renee needs to fix her measurements” issue? Or do I need to just move the side seam back because my hips measurement alone doesn’t capture where my body needs the fabric?
Back view; looks fine to me except for the wrinkles coming from the ?inseam. Any hints on those?
Thanks in advance!
(Design notes because I’m actually really excited to be working on these: I’m thinking about changing the back dart to a yoke?? Waffling back and forth on that - I think a yoke could look really cute. I don’t need back pockets - instead of inside pockets, maybe I could try patch pockets, like a pair of jeans?? Still deciding what I want to do.)
I would recommend starting from Titan, the block charlie is based on.
Charlie layers some style choices on top of the block that make it far less suitable to gauge fit, including that signature wrap around pocket opening that is a bit if a design flex.
I appreciate it might seem like a chore to start again with a different design, but you will get far better results, and once you’ve established a nice fit with Titan, you should be good for all designs that extend it, such ad Charlie, Paco and future designs based on Titan.
Keep in mind that Titan by default is waist-high, so you might want to lower that for a similar style.
As Joost said, this is normal for Charlie as it moves the side seam pockets forwards for easier access.
If you’re interested, I’m working on a design that basically the same as Charlie, just more jeans-like with a normal side seam, yoke and jeans-style front and back pockets and an optional crotch gusset.
Maybe try to increase the grainline position advanced setting. Not sure if that helps, but it looks like your pants are trying to go “outwards” too much and that seems to improve that. Alternatively maybe your crotch is actually lower than what you measured, so what also could work is to increase the waist-to-upper-leg measurement. The upper leg line should be measured “a bit” below the crotch, you may want to increase that bit. Maybe up to 2 inches or 5 cm or so. But that’s also just speculation.
Of course you’re using thin muslin fabric which tends to wrinkle more anyway than better fabric.
Ooh, that Paul pattern looks great! Looking forward to it.
You know, I was wondering about the grainline position setting: I haven’t quite wrapped my head around what it does (possibly because I don’t understand enough about grainline yet!). In any case, I’m considering cutting the pieces on the bias, to give my thighs some stretch when needed without making the leg super wide.
I’ll try lowering the crotch/fixing the waist-to-upper-leg measurement first: when I was locking in my shirt pattern, I found I had a lot of measurements to fix! And my posture has changed since I first took my measurements way back when. So it would definitely make sense it’s a measurements issue.
I see it as there should be a little bit more material at the front (tummy) and a little bit less at the back (seat). Here are the remeasurements that Charlie uses, as seen in “Edit settings by hand” in pattern editor.
crossSeam: …
crossSeamFront: …
knee: …
seat: …
seatBack: …
waist: …
waistBack: ..
…
…
…
You can play directly with them directly under “Edit settings by hand” in pattern editor.
I did a short test with my own measurements giving me more space into the front part of trousers:
If you want to dive into the topic of getting pants to fit just right, there’s a really nice video series on the ‘Top Down Center Out’ method by the Crooked Hem:
I used it a while ago and feel like I learned a lot.
(edited to put the link on a line by itself so the preview will show up… I want that badge! )
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