Red pants. Simplicity 3850

Red pants? Check! Happy me? Check!

Now that I'm a school teacher, I figure I can get away with clothes which are a little wilder than the corporate bibs and bobs I used to wear. These cute pants surely fit the bill.

I made these with OOP Simplicity 3850, which is a Built By Wendy pattern. I've made this pattern twice before, but these still required more modifications to get the fit right. The red fabric, a stretch drill I think, was purchased for $5 per meter from Spotlight and then reduced by a further 40%.

Because of the stretch in the fabric, I had to take these in quite a bit to get them to fit nicer. Unfortunately, the red fabric also shows fitting issues far more than the previous black and brown pants that I've made with this pattern. In particular, I had considerable fitting issues under the butt, with quite a bit of excess fabric pooling there. According to my research this can happen if you have flat bottom, which I didn't think I have, but I guess my bum isn't as generously proportioned as some. So I took in the back inner seam by well over an inch and modified the crotch seam and that appears to have fixed most of the problem. There is still some excess fabric there, but it doesn't look that bad.

Check out the red frames- cool huh?

To get these to look a little more like the Emerson Made pants, I also slightly tapered the leg to make the pants a little more slim fitting. They fall just above my ankle, but I'm still undecided what length to finish them. I also still need to source some matching buttons for the back tabs and from button.

The pants are still probably a little looser than I would like, but they are still cool and possibly a little more wearable because there aren't super tight.

I have really enjoyed making and fitting these pants. They have been quite fiddly, but very satisfying. Now I also have some purple fabric in my stash and am contemplating making another coloured pair. Why not right?