SDCC Masquerade Project #9 - The 10th Doctor Who Suit.Whos' Got Pants?!

After making nearly all of the jacket, I could turn my attention to the necessary pants. I thought that I had enough to make the pants, but the question was...did I really have enough?

I laid out the fabric and the largest pattern pieces, and to my dismay, I didn't have quite enough fabric (width-wise) to cut out. Admittedly, I had a moment of panic, enough to say a few choice words unfit for children's ears.

(Note the overlapping pattern pieces)

However, I remembered that the pattern, itself, was pretty generous with how much extra they added for tailoring and fitting purposes. I had taken in the side seam and inseam by quite a bit, so I knew I could futz with how much of the pattern I could reasonably alter that would leave me about 1/2 inch of seam allowance. I could live with 1/2 inches of seam allowance as it would give me some room for any additional tweaks I needed to make.

I took a ruler to the pattern and drew out a few extra cutting lines at different amounts to shaving off some of the width (1/2 inch, 5/8inch, etc). Then I laid it out on the fabric again. It would be tight, but I managed to squeeze the entire width of the pants onto the remaining fabric.

Unfortunately, this meant that there could be no mistakes, and there would be no pattern matching for certain pieces, but at this point I didn't quite care as I was glad to have enough for what I needed, and maybe a little extra left over to make something small.

I did do some pattern matching for some of the more obvious pieces, like the pockets facings, but this pattern piece was relatively small, and I used some scraps left over from the jacket, so I could reuse as much as possible.

However, there were certain pieces, like the waistband facings and zipper facings, where I just didn't bother pattern matching.

The original costume has horizontal stripes for the waist band, but as this part is going to be covered by the jacket, I felt that it wasn't going to be completely necessary to have the stripes horizontal. Plus, as mentioned above...I didn't have enough fabric to make it completely accurate.

One of the back pant pieces.

Overall, the making of the pants went much quicker than the jacket itself. There were some fussy bits, like the zipper. Zippers are always a little bit tricky, but a good narrow zipper foot can be your best friend at times like these.

And there was some hand sewing that needed to be done in a few spots. I also realized that I had placed the zipper about 1/2 inches too far down (which I'll be modifying in the pattern notes later), but it isn't a show stopper.

But in the end, I had a working pair of pants that fit me very well. I just need to hem them now.

Now to actually finish the jacket....