Morgan Boyfriend Jeans

Over the last year or so I've had a few goes at making jeans and while I've been able to successfully construct some lovely, well made jeans none of them have been quite right on the fit front.  A few months ago I had been working on Burda 6798, I loved the style but the waist was coming out enormous while the calf area was alarmingly tight.  I'd made a few adjustments and they still weren't right and I, unfortunately have very little patience for making muslins, so I decided to risk starting at the beginning again and ordered the Closet Case Patterns Morgan Jeans. The style is similar and I figured that if it worked out then I could add the back pockets from the Burda jeans in the future, which were really the main selling point for me.

Well, you could knock me down with a feather because I made a quick muslin for the Morgan jeans and they pretty much fit me exactly out of the envelope. The only issue I had, again, was tight calves and the non issue of the cropped size fitting me as full length pants!  I had measured my calf before choosing a size, the pattern very helpfully includes finished measurements for a number of points on the body and I knew it would be close but thought I'd just squeeze in there.  Upon re-measuring both legs it turns out that my right calf is half an inch bigger than the left one and that had caused the problem.  I'm now wondering if I need to bulk up leftie to match!  Anyway, I figured that sewing the seams below the knee with a slightly smaller seam allowance would give gigantocalf enough room to move and I went ahead and cut out my denim.

My denim came from Doughty's Online and I'm really happy with it so far.  It came out of the wash with a really lovely texture and is a nice medium weight which should be good through to the end of Autumn.

The construction of these jeans was mostly straightforward.  This was my first time sewing a button fly and the directions were very clear and it came out looking neat and professional.  I will however be getting my old machine back out of retirement for the next time I make jeans with proper topstitching thread because it was a mega pain in the arse to keep changing the thread and the tension and the stitch length all the time.  I had a few issues with my machine not really liking the heavy thread so it would have been good to get the set up just right and then not fiddle with it again.  There are a few little thread nests on the inside of my jeans, but I am far too lazy to unpick and start again when it comes to stuff that no one else can see.  I used about a spool and a quarter of Guterman topstitching thread to complete these jeans, including a bit of practice sewing.

The bits I won't be talking about are the corners on the waistband (which are not my best work) and the waistband buttonhole (which caused some very prolonged swearing, followed by tears and despair).  Other that that I couldn't be more pleased.  The baby blue topstitching looks ace, the jeans fit comfortably and I'm really looking forward to trying out different design elements to make myself a mini wardrobe of Morgans.  This pattern gets a great big thumbs up from me and I'm now very, very tempted to order the Closet Case Gingers too to wear with long boots once it starts getting cooler.  I have a feeling you are going to be seeing rather a lot of jeans from me in the coming months!

Smugface!