Birchbob Pants - Red Ikat

Pattern/Technique: Birchgrove Pants by Muna & Broad in size D. Bob Pants by Style Arc in size 22.

Modifications: Used the same mashed up pattern that I created when making my first set of BirchBob pants, with no mods.

Materials: 2.5 yds of red cotton ikat (42” wide) by Robert Kaufman

Cut 38” of 1 1/2” wide elastic and overlapped by 1”

New skills: n/a

Lessons/Notes: This cotton ikat seems to have a denser weave than the black ikat fabric I used for my first set of pants, which has resulted in a more durable pant. My first two wears of these were in Tulum, Mexico where the weather was around 30C with 85% humidity and I had no pilling in the crotch. (Success!)

I serged the bottom hem and then folded it under once. (NB: I eyeballed the fold width using the point in the pattern piece and ended up with a pretty spot on 1” hem—super handy!)

What I'd do differently: I still want to try making a set with pockets—because this was last minute pre-vacation sewing I skipped them, but having a place to hold my phone would be handy.

Care: Machine wash, tumble dry low.

Birchgrove x Bob Pants Hack

Pattern/Technique: Bob Pants by Style Arc in size 22 + Birchgrove Pants by Muna & Broad in size D.

Modifications: See below.

Materials: 2.25 yds (45” wide) black dot ikat from iTokri

New skills: Pattern hacking pants

Lessons & Techniques:

Toile 01 - Bob, no mods

Used the standard Bob pattern, no modifications. There were a few things going on here that I wanted to change:

• These are designed as a mid-rise pant, but I generally like to wear high rise

• There’s a lot of extra fabric bunched around the front of the pants - you can see where it’s folded over by about an inch

• There are drag lines in the back of the pants and it feels like they’re climbing up into my butt

Toile 02 - Bob, scooped crotch & added rise in back

I pinned in at the center front (CF) by X” and redrew the front crotch scoop to be deeper, which smoothed out the front. This got me thinking about the geometry of pants as applied to bodies. Intuitively you’d think to grade a pattern for a larger body, one adds width to the pattern piece (i.e. more material). However, in practice, larger bodies aren’t necessarily wider, they’re actually deeper / more 3-dimensional (h/t to leila_sews for this insight). So to make the pattern fit my body better, it actually involved removing material from the front pieces to better accommodate my 3-dimensionality.

I also added 1.5” of additional rise at center back (CB) and graded it to 0” at the side seams. This got rid of the wedgie feeling at the back, but the back drag lines are still as aggressive as ever.

Toile 03 - Birchgrove crotch & Bob sides

Muna & Broad patterns work beautifully for my body geometry, so rather than trying to continue fitting the Bobs, I was curious if I could instead start with a tried & true pattern. I posed the question in the Muna & Broad forums, and Jess had some helpful advice to try drafting a balloon leg, then pivoting the inseam on the front pattern piece (she noted that the back pattern piece inseams are pretty similar).

For the first mashup toile I drafted the balloon leg on the outside of the Birchgrove pattern pieces. The balloon leg is very subtle, but there are way fewer drag lines so we’re on the right track! (Check that sweet #arthurfist in the upper left. :)

Back: I traced the crotch curve, inseam, and top lines from the Birchgrove. I aligned the top left corner of the Bob & Birchgrove, then traced the the outside edge of the Bob pattern piece with the outside edge of the Birchgrove to draw the Balloon leg.

Front: I traced the top, crotch curve, and inseam from the Birchgrove, then matched the outside edge with the Bob to trace the balloon leg. I also traced a pivot of the Birchgrove inseam where it hit the inseam of the Bob at the ankle. One thing I noticed after tracing is that the grain lines on the Bob & Birchgrove are not parallel using this overlay, which made me think that the lines on the toile might not be correct.

Toile 04 - Birchgrove crotch & Bob sides v1.5

On this toile I tried pivoting the inseam on the front leg. In the picture below, the right (relative to the viewer) leg is v1 and left leg is v1.5. The balloon leg is a bit more obvious, but there’s some extra material from the back piece making a slight bulge near the ankle.

I unpicked part of the seam and removed some material from the bottom part of the back leg (approx 1.25” at the ankle, graded to 0” at the knee) which got rid of the bulge. Balloon leg is still very subtle.

Toile 05 - Birchgrove crotch & Bob sides v2

We have liftoff! In this picture, v2 is on the left leg (relative to the viewer) and v1 is on the right leg. The balloon leg silhouette looks very similar to the original Bob but the fit feels much better (and no drag lines!)

On this version I wanted to try and redraw the front pattern piece by overlaying the Birchgrove crotch and Bob outseam where the grainlines are parallel. I traced the outside edge of the Bob, then aligned the Birchgrove crotch curve point with the same point on the Bob, making sure the grainline mark and top of the rise were roughly parallel (left image). Then I pivoted the inseam of the Birchgrove so it matched the angle of the inseam of the Bob and traced the Birchgrove inseam (right image).

Here’s the the difference in what the front pattern pieces looked like between v1 and v2—it’s pretty dramatic!

What I'd do differently: I didn't add pockets to the final wearable toile, and want to try it on a future iteration.

Care: Machine wash cold, dry flat.