Sewing Basics: How to Sew Pants for a Perfect Fit

1. Introduction: I think everyone should learn how to sew because how cool is that if you can walk around wearing even a pair of shorts you made, something really minimal and someone asks you where you got it and then you get to say, I made it. It just means more. It's impressive and it's not that hard to do, which makes it even more fun. Hey, my name is Joe Ando, and I love to sew clothing. Initially, I started in fashion by going to fashion college. Luckily, I developed a community of people around me on TikTok. It really does feel like I've found people who like to do what I do, and it's really just nice to have that kind of community. In today's class, we're going to be making a pair of pants from start to finish. I'm going to be showing you how to fix the pant afterwards to adjust the pattern that you get at the beginning of the class, and we're going to fit it so that it's custom-made to you. I like the idea of making one thing that you know is going to be reliable and you know it's going to last and you know it's going to have a history and a story of living on with you. It just takes a little bit of effort to get to where you want to go. This class is for people who've always just been thinking about making clothing and getting into it. I would like people to watch this and think, oh, I guess it's not as hard as I thought. I hope when you finish this class that you have a pant that you can feel very proud of, that you can wear around every day. Every single part of it is a creation that you made, it's a collection of all of your choices and you should feel a big sense of accomplishment and you should definitely feel some pride as a result. I hope you're ready to create some heirloom quality pants. Let's go ahead and get started. 2. Getting Started: [MUSIC] Hey. Welcome to the class. Today, we're going to be making an heirloom quality pair of pants. I'm going to be teaching you all the finishes you need to be able to make something that's going to last. Today, I'm going to be teaching you how to make pants out of cotton muslin. Cotton muslin is just the industry standard for what you use to make samples. The main reason it's because it's primarily very affordable. It's also just nice to have something that you can mark and not really worry about too much. The reason that I'm actually here teaching this class today, I like people looking at what I make and thinking that they can do it too, that it's not that difficult. I would like people to watch this and think, I guess it's not as hard as I thought. Maybe I should give it a chance, maybe it's worth buying a sewing machine. Maybe it's worth taking an hour out of my day to figure out how to make my own clothing. I want to make clothing that people can wear every day. I'm not necessarily looking to dress someone up for a fancy event. I want someone to just wear a pair of pants I make and beat them up and wear them every day and make them their staple pair of pants. With this pant pattern today, there's two types of patterns you can use. There's A4, which is what you can go ahead to your printer and just print out. It's going to be about 30-35 pages and then you're going to tape all of those pages together. Or there's A0, which is a system where you can go online and look up different places that print your patterns for you. You can upload that file and then they'll actually ship it to you. I have that today to show you as well, but I'm going to show you how to tape everything together in a way that works. Then from that big pattern that we print together, we're going to lay the fabric out after ironing it and then we're going to cut those pieces out and start sewing it all together. The first step for today is we're gonna be putting together the pockets. That's normally what you do first because on the front pant leg, there's a missing section that needs to be filled by that pocket. You're going to be learning top stitching in that process and then once we pass the pocket section, we're going to move on to actually putting the pant legs together. In that process, we're going to attach the pant legs on the side seams where we're going to be doing a flat fold seam finish. On the inseam, we're going to be doing a flinch seam and then on the crotch, we're going to be doing a Hong Kong bound seam, which is where we take a thing called bias tape, which is like a long, thin semi stretchy form of fabric and we're going to be wrapping it around for a really nice, expensive finish. I'm going to be teaching you how to put a zipper in, how to do a J-stitch and how to attach both parts so that you have a functioning zipper. We're also going to be learning to stitch in the ditch. Stitching in the ditch is where when you have a seam, you sew back into that seam and catch the fabric on the backside so you don't have an extra stitch showing to keep everything a little bit more clean, and then we're going to be putting a hook and eye on by hand and after that, we're going to try the pant on, see how it fits, make a couple of adjustments on the waist, the crotch, the crotch depth, and the hem if the pants are either too short or too long, and we're going to take those adjustments and bring them back to the actual pattern and you're going to make those adjustments there, I'll show you how, and then afterwards, you're going to have a custom pattern for yourself to continue making pants forever. We actually have a PDF available with all the notes that I've created for this class, and they're all listed methodically step by step. If it's a little bit more difficult for you to follow along with what I'm saying, you can have that ready with you just to go step by step and take your time in this process. Now, we're going to go ahead and look over the list of supplies you're going to need for this class. First things first. A sewing machine. This is a Brother CS6000i, I've had it since the beginning of college. Next, we've got the patterns, we've got the A4 and the A0. This is the A4, it comes with a little map like that. It shows you how you're supposed to tape it together. This is the one that you print out at your own printer. This here is an A0 pattern. This is the one that you upload on a website and you pay them to ship it to you on a big piece of paper. But we're going to get into the details of patterns in the next lesson. This is a long French curve. You don't need it, it's optional, but it will make your life a lot easier because this is mirroring the hip and length of what you're going to have on the side of your pant, so I recommend getting this if you can. This is called a ship curve. This is optional, it's not fully necessary, it's just another option for a different shape and a different curve, so you have it. This is also a French curve, but it's a shorter French curve. This one, I say you should definitely have it, it's just going to make your life a lot easier, especially when you're dealing with your curves on your hips, when you're changing the pattern. This is an 18-inch clear ruler. I recommend getting a clear one with these lines. This way, you can see through it and see what's actually happening when you're matching things up. Box of pins. For what we're doing, you're going to want normal, medium grade pins. Call these snips. They're just little scissors, but they're just handy to have. These are optional, but it's nice to have these by your sewing machines, so you don't have to grab your big scissors every time you need them. Seven-inch zipper, right here. A nice sharp pair of scissors. These are my scissors. These are ones that I splurged on, but these things are great. You just need something that's going to be able to cut the fabric. These are table weights. I bought these that are specific for fashion patterning table weights. But anything works as long as you can just hold your paper down while you're working, so it doesn't move around and shift. I'd like to have different scissors for paper than I do for fabric. Because cutting paper with your fabric scissors makes the scissors more dull, which will make it harder to cut fabric, especially when you're doing more than one layer at a time. This right here is bias tape. You can go ahead and get whatever color you want. The reason I have white and the blue one here today is because white is what I would normally use to match the fabric that I'm using, but because I want you to be able to see what I'm doing and actually see the contrast of how everything looks, I'm going to be using blue today for when I do the Hong Kong seam finish. Tape, you're going to need tape to tape your patterns together. You're going to need two sets of hook and eyes. You have the option to put two on, you can also put one on as well, but make sure you have them. Hand sewing needles, as you can see right here, I keep them in a pill bottle because it's just an easy place to keep track of them because they're very easy to lose, but make sure you have hand sewing needles. This is also optional. This is a chalk pen right here. I recommend getting it, it makes your life a lot easier. You can mark seam lines where you need to sew or mark different things you need to be aware of and it will disappear eventually. This is a seam ripper. You're probably going to end up needing this. I've been doing this for a long time and I still use it, seam ripper. Next, this is the cotton muslin. This is five yards, but you're only going to need two-and-a-half yards. I got this at a place called Silk Thread, but you can get it literally anywhere. This is medium weight cotton muslin. This is iron on interfacing. It's a fabric where one side of it, it has this glue and you can iron it onto certain pieces of patterns and certain fabrics to make it more sturdy. You're going to need about a half yard of this. Generally, iron on interfacings are all pretty light. Some of them are more heavy for suiting or more stiff, but this is like a pretty sheer lightweight iron on interfacing. This is pocketing. This is just the different cotton fabric that I'm going to use for the pockets. You don't have to do this, but if you want to, it's a nice little detail to be aware of, especially when you're making nicer pants in the future. For your machine, everybody has a different one, but you're going to need a zipper presser foot to put on the zipper. There are two types of zipper presser foots, there's an invisible and then a normal one. This is the normal one, that's the only one you're going to need today. This is an ironing hem. When you're ironing certain things like the hip of a pant, it's nice because you can use the different curves of this to actually press down and open them. Sometimes on a flat surface, it can be hard. It's optional, but it's nice to have. This is an arm ironing board, it's very small, not necessary as well, but I like to use it. Sometimes you just don't have the space you need or sometimes things are too small and thin. It's nice to have this because you can slide a pant leg over it whenever you need or a sleeve. Also you're going to need an iron, any iron works. Also just make sure to get a thread that you can use that's like to the color that you're going to be getting for the fabric, whatever matches. If you want to get something that contrast for a style choice, that's okay too. A thread that I really like to use is called Gutermann. This is not that, it's a slightly thicker, nicer thread. Sometimes it's a little bit too thick, but for the sake of making pants in the future, it's a nice one to have. Just so you know, there's a downloadable PDF. If you weren't able to follow along or you just want everything listed methodically for you, you can download the PDF and have the list printed out. You can go to the store and buy what you need. Generally, for me, I live in New York. I'm really lucky to have a fashion district I can go to where I can get everything. But I know across the country, there are places like Jo-Ann's that you can go buy pins or fabrics or honestly online shipping is just a great way to go these days, especially when you need something specific like a ship curve that I showed you. They might not have that at CVS or something. Online is maybe your best bet if you're not in a place where you can just access everything very easily. In the PDF that I mentioned, you're going to be able to go and look at the stores based on the products that we have on this table, so that way, you can go check out where I shop. Start getting your supplies together and then join me in the next lesson where we're going to start to prep the pattern, prep our space, prep the fabric, and then actually start making the pants. [MUSIC] 3. Prepare Your Pattern: Now we're going to be prepping our pattern to actually cut out our pattern pieces and then cut out our fabric so we can start sewing, so go to "My Resources" tab on my class page and then what you can do is you can find two files that are under men's and women's pant patterns and from there there's two separate file option. There's A4 and AO. This is AO, AO is the option where you actually download the file and you send it to a separate site, it's easy to find if you just look up different sites that print AO pattern files to actually shipped to me. They'll send you a big one that's already put together, so large sheet like this, it prints them out and bigger sheets, so that way you have to do less taping. The taping is not a big deal, it's really easy, but if you want to do this, it's probably a lot nicer, so this is what AO is going to look like. This right here is an A4 file, that's where it prints out everything in 8.5 by 11 inch sheets of paper and then you have to take the whole thing together, that's probably a lot easier and more accessible and obviously a faster option even though the AO comes pretty fast, I'm going to teach you how to do this, it's very easy and, I like this option printed home. Ultimately, they're very similar, just different sizing options but for the men's pant pattern, men's closures go leftover, so on a suit or on a parent fly, it's leftover, right with the zipper in the middle on women's closure, it's right over left. This is the A4, print it out right here 35 eight sheets of paper, pretty much all you need to do and all you need to know is that when you print normally on the edge of the paper, there's always just a little cut-off gap of space, it's annoying, but you just need to do your best to take these sheets of paper and match them up edge to edge as clean as possible. You'll be able to eye the lines and make sure the lines match up, it's very simple, go ahead and do one for you right now. Match this up here as best you can see, these different lines tape over it and then you're good to go, this is ultimately what it's going to look like. Look at that, all taped together it's really easy, you just need a good amount of tape but, this is what you can do straight from your own printer if you want to. Each pattern comes with the key, there is a layout page, so when you're taping everything together, you follow this layout page like it's a map that'll, keep you organized and then there's also a key for sizing. It says extra small, medium, large, extra large, each size has its own line, find your size and then go to the pattern and find the line that corresponds to the size and only cut that out on every single one. Certain pieces on here like the pocket or the pocket cover, it's all one size for every different size, so it's not going to change, but for all the ones that obviously have different lines on them, just find the corresponding line and you'll be good to go. For me, I'm a size medium, so I'm going to go ahead and cut off the solid line on all of these pattern pieces. One more important thing that you have to know about these patterns is because of that little gap that comes when you print it, you literally just have to take a ruler and a pencil and fill in that line, so if there's a little gap between this line right here, all you have to do is just connected with a straight ruler and you just have to do the best-fit line possible that you can do. That's what you do with all of the little gaps but otherwise it's perfectly sized and it's ready to go, the only thing about the AO that's nicer is you also don't have to do that step. Now we're just going to go ahead and cut out a piece. I'm going to start with the waist band, that's what's at the top, that's what's easy to do, like I said, I'm a size medium, I'm looking for the solid line so follow along. If these sizes are outside of the right range, I know we're only going from extra small to extra large, the reason we did that is because it's expensive to get things graded, so we just tried to keep it to, I guess, some very basic sizing. But hopefully from what you're going to learn at the end of this, if you're an extra small, you're going to learn how to size these pants down and if you're an extra large, you can learn how to size this thing up and learn how to play around with your pattern and eventually get it to be your size. The waist band is cut out, I'm going to go ahead and cut out the rest of the pattern pieces, you go ahead and do the same thing and then we're going to meet up on the next lesson and we're going to start actually cutting the fabric out, so I'll see you then. 4. Prepare and Cut Fabric: Now that you've got your pattern cutout, we can go ahead and start getting ready to cut the actual fabric out. I just want to give you some information about how these patterns work and what everything on these things means. First and foremost, every pattern has a line with the arrows that's showing you where the grain goes. Normally when you cut fabric, you want it to go along the length grain. What that means is when you buy fabric, you buy it by the yard. If you buy three yards of fabric, it'll be a 60-inch to the 48-inch wide fabric. There are different shapes and sizes for it, but generally, it's that. Length three means you want to go along the yardage, you want to go with the grain. Often a fabric, especially muslin has a salvage. It's a little thicker colored part on the end of the actual fabric, that signifies where it has just been closed off. You want to go along that. With the length grain, some of these things are marked cut on the bias. What that means is you cut it on the angle. When you cut fabric on an angle, it has more stretch. For example, you're going to be one of the waistband pieces on the bias, so length grain is like this. This is the width, and then the bias is at an angle between them, which means you're cutting the underway spanned with some stretch on it. That way when you put it on when, you put a waistband on, it allows you to fit things a little bit better, and that way it's just not too stiff. That's very important to know. On each of these pattern pieces, it's noted how many of each thing that you need to cut and in which way you need to cut them. For example here, this is the back pant. It says men's trousers sewing pattern three, back pant leg, cut to self. What the word itself means is your main body fabric. Some of these we'll say cut one interfacing, cut one pocketing, cut oneself, self is just always the main fabric that you're using for whatever garment you're making. This is an example. This is the fly guard. It says cut oneself, cut one interfacing. Interfacing is webbed material with the glue on it that you iron to another piece of fabric to make it more sturdy. That's just letting you know that you're going to be using this pattern not only to just cut one of the self-fabric pieces, your main fabric, you're also using the same pattern to cut this to iron to it later on. Other pieces say the same thing. These two are pockets. They say cut pocketing, like I said, you don't have to use pocketing for this project if you don't want to. But if you do want to take that extra step, use these to cut out of the separate fabric. So this piece right here is the waistband piece. This is the only piece you're going to be cutting on the bias today. So just so you know, this arrow right here is straight, that's to signify the straight grain, so when you cut one of these pieces, it's going to be on the straight grain on your main fabric. This diagonal line is to show you the bias. Let's say this is the length of the actual fabric that you're cutting on. In order to cut a bias piece, what you need to do is take this line and make it the new straight grain by doing this, by shifting it, and making this angled on the fabric, which is going to cut out a piece that has a lot more stretch. This is your bias line right here. This is just a straight-grain line right here. Now what we're going to do is we're going to prep our fabric. This is cotton muslin. Get your cotton muslin out. Like I said, you only need two-and-a-half yards of it. That's still might be a little bit too much, but it's always good to have a little extra in case you do just mess up a little bit or something. But now take your cotton muslin, go ahead and get your iron out and try and iron out these creases for the parts you're going to be cutting out as best you can. Normally when you buy it, it's folded out, so just try and go iron these creases out. Doing that is a good idea because with fabric, especially like wool, it will shrink, so what we'd like to do is we love to free steam our fabric, so that way when you run it through the wash, in case it does shrink, it's not going to be as substantial as if you've already pre-steamed something. Most of you probably have an ironing board. I've got this ironing mat saves space. I prefer ironing board, but just for the sake of making sure you all can see what I'm up to, I've got an ironing mat today. Just place it on top of your table and then go through these creases as best you can. Nice to give the fabric like a little pre-steam. It's also nice to have everything laying flat for when you cut it because sometimes they can throw things off by a couple of millimeters. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but it can pay off in the end if you're trying to make sure everything is very precise. Go ahead and try and get all the creases out for the parts that you're going to be cutting on, and then after that, we're just going to go ahead and lay the pattern pieces down and actually start cutting out the fabric. But once that's done, go ahead and get your table space as clear as you can. Lay your fabric out over the top of it, and we're going to start pinning our pattern pieces and then cut them out. I'm going to start with this pant right here. This is the front pant leg. Go ahead, place that down, and like I was talking about with straight grain, you're cutting this along the straight grain. As you can see, the length of this thing is how it's cutting in a long way. Normally width is from top to bottom, cut along the length of the fabric with the length of it that you actually purchased. So if you bought three yards of it, it's going with the three yards, not along the vertical. Now what you can do is go ahead and start pinning along the edge of the pattern pieces. Very simple. What you're going to do is you're going to pin around as many as you need to do. Generally, you just do whatever makes you comfortable. If you have a steady hand when cutting, you don't have to pin as much. If you feel like you've got a more shaky hand or you're not as confident, you can't pin too much. It's okay. Go ahead and pin more. That way it holds it down more sturdy. You're going to make sure nothing wobbles while you cut. Go ahead and pin all the way around this piece. You can cut piece by piece and then put pattern pieces on. What I like to do is get everything pinned and then cut it all together. Some things you need to cut two off, some things you need to cut three off you can just go step-by-step after that. But for the first wave, don't be afraid to just put everything out where you need to and see it while you cut it. Everything else is also going to be along the straight grain except for the waistbands. So you can feel free to take all the other pattern pieces and pin them along every single part here along the straight grain. I'm just going to show you really quickly how to do the waistband, so that way you see what I mean by actually cutting on the bias. So like I said, with the straight grain of the fabric, this line indicates straight grain along with the length of the fabric. So normally, for the first piece when you cut with this fabric, you're cutting like this. But the moment that you need to cut it on the bias, what you're going to do is you're going to shift this line to match the straight grains. This line was initially matching the straight grain here, and now you're taking this diagonal line and shifting it so that this pattern pieces on an angle giving it more stretch. I can show you a little example of what that actually looks like really quickly. This is the horizontal. Along the straight edges, the fabric is not as stretchy, but when you do it on an angle, it stretches a lot more. It has a little bit more give, so that's why we're cutting on the bias. Same thing with this thing. Find a space that you can fit this pattern piece. Get your pins, and now with this bias line facing straight, go ahead and start painting around the edge as well, along the edge. So you can go ahead and I'll start painting around all your pattern pieces. Remember, for this waistband piece, you need to cut one of this piece of the pattern piece on this fabric along the straight grain, then flip it to do the bias on the same fabric, and then you're going to be cutting one piece of interfacing, which is this webby material that I told you all about earlier. You're cutting this on the straight grain on the webby material. You just need one. I have these two pieces pinned right now. I'm going to go ahead and cut them out. I'm just going to show you what the interface looks like and the pocketing. But for this main fabric, I don't need you to sit through me pinning every individual one. I've shown you how to pin, I've shown you how to do the bias, now go ahead and cut everything out and make sure you follow the instructions on each pattern piece for how many things you need, and then next, I'm going to see you after we cut everything out and then we're going to move on to the next lesson. Now everything is pinned. Like I said, just make sure for things that need to be cut twice or three times, make sure you go back and do that. Sometimes what I like to do with this fabric because I like to fold it in half along the length, so that way you can just cut to pieces at a time. That is totally fine. But just for the purposes of right now and showing you how everything should be laid out. We're just going one layer at a time. Now everything's pinned. Get your scissors, your fabric scissors, not your paper scissors, and not the pinking shears that do the jagged edges, the fabric scissors, and you can go ahead and just start cutting. That's one front pant leg done. You need two, so you got to go back. Unpin this one and re-pin it again to cut your second one. Move this out of the way. Move on to the rest. Go ahead and cut all your other pattern pieces out. I'm going to move on to showing you about notches, telling you what notches are. So what notches are they're these little t marks there on every pattern piece. What you need to do with all of these notches is you need to go to every single one. There's multiple on this front pattern piece, there's one here, there's one along the crotch seam there's one where the knee point line is. And you need to take your scissors and go into that notch. Only a quarter of an inch. Your seam allowance line is at a half inch. A half inches what you're going to be sewing this thing along. Whenever you match up these pattern pieces and put it on your machine, you're sewing at a half an inch, so don't pass that half inch or else you're going to have a cut going into your pin. Only snip into these things, either an eighth of an inch or a quarter of an inch. And what you're going to need these there's notches on every pattern piece, so you can match everything up to make sure everything's in the right place. Go ahead, snip into all your notches and then you can unpin this and move on to the next step. Now we have everything cut just so you know what everything is. This is the front pant leg right here. This is the fly guard. This is the interfacing that's going to be ironed onto this fly guard. This is the fly-facing. This is the interfacing that's going to be paired with the fly-facing. These are the two pocket bag pieces. This was cut out in a different material, like I said you can cut it out in pocketing, so here they are. This is the pocket cover right here. This is the back pant leg. And these are the three pieces you need for the waistband, the interfacing that's going to be ironed onto these self-straight grain piece that you cut, the straight grain waistband piece, and then this is the bias waistband piece that you're going to need, and that's everything for one pattern leg in front of you right here. What we're going to do next is we're going to take these pocket bag pieces right here and the pocket cover, and we're going to go ahead and sell the pocket bag. We're going to do a French seam. I'm also going to show you how to put the pocket cover up. Go ahead, get everything cut out and then join me for the next lesson where we're going to be putting the pocket bag together. 5. Start Pocket Bag: We're about to dive into pockets. This is the pocket section. The reason we're going to hit the pockets first is because on the front pant leg, you can see that there is a little section that is missing. This is the pant leg right here with this cutout right here, and what we're doing is we're creating the pocket bag so that way we can sew it to the front pattern leg and fill in this gap space right there so we can attach this whole thing to the back pant leg. We're getting that ready, and then we can move on to sewing the actual body of the pant. First thing is first is prepping the front pant leg with the pocket. We're taking this cover right here. This is the bottom pocket bag cover. On the half-inch line, that's where the seam allowance line is, that's the line that you're sewing on on all the seams. Take your pencil, take your ruler and go to a half-inch. Cool. Now you can see along the half-inch, we've drawn this line right here. You're going to take your scissors and you're going to snip into it along the curve. The tough thing about curves when you're sewing is they don't naturally fall flat, especially if you're folding fabric under. Look what happens if you try and fold this without these snips. It's all wobbly and not really flat. It's just not really falling the right way. But what you do with these snips is it releases tension and it has some give and it allows you to fold these under individually creating a more smooth curve along this edge. Only along the curve, not along the straight parts, you snip up to that half-inch line that we just drew. It's a guide to make things a little easier this first time around. Snip up to it. Now what we're going to do is we're going to go get our iron and we're going to fold these things under using this half-inch line as a guide for where you need to stop. To get your mat or you're ironing board, whatever works, place it on here, get your iron and you're going to go along that half-inch line right here, you're going to fold it under. Don't be afraid to just pinch and create a little crease, and you're going to do this all the way around. I generally like to do it like this on the opposite side so that way we can see where it stops and you're going to take your iron. Now you just got to go ahead, use your hands, keep folding down along that crease line, along that line you've drawn, don't be afraid to steam it to really set it in place. There we go. All the way. What you're doing is you're creating a clean, finished edge. That way, it's not going to be all raw when you put it down and sew it to the actual piece. What you're going to do now is get rid of this thing, take this under pocket bag right here. This is the one that doesn't have this section cut out right there. You're going to take this thing you just made, this cover, and you're going to place it and match it along these edges right here. There's a notch at the top of this pocket bag right here, the little snip you should have done on it. You're actually matching up this top piece to that notch on the pocket bag. Match that right there, match the corner here, and then just place the bottom. Now what you're going to do is you're going to take your pins and you're just going to pin along here. Cool. Now that this has done, what we're going to do is we're going to bust our sewing machine out, get rid of your iron. We're going to get our sewing machine and sew a quarter-inch from this edge, all the way up. Every sewing machine has a measurement marker right where the foot is. It'll show you where a quarter-inch is, we're a half-inch is, find those marks because they're going to be your best friend in this situation. Take this pinned, put it under your foot and find where that quarter-inch line is, put your foot down. For this, technically what we're about to do is we're about to top stitch. Top stitch is just a stitch you do along the top to hold things together. Often it's used as a design or just to hold things down to give it that extra sturdy sewing stitch along the top. What we're going to do now is sew quarter-inch from the edge, put this thing down. Also important thing to know for a top stitch, it doesn't need to be the small stitch that we usually use. When we do seams, often you're doing a 2-3 length stitch. You often have a measurement thing on your machine that allows you to judge how wide you want your stitches to be. For this, if you can find it, feel free to go three or 3.5. That's just a different stitch length. For a top stitch, it's not so crucial to have it be such a tight stitch because it's not holding two pieces together for a seam. Feel free to make it a little bit bigger because it's technically a detailed choice. Now that we're here, what you need to know when you're starting to sew anything is you need to start with a back tack. What that means is you go to stitches forward. Don't be afraid to use the hand-cranked thing. Go two stitches forward, and then use your reverse button on your machine. If you don't have a reverse button on your machine, you might just have to take your piece and flip it around and then sew backwards. But if you do, press the button down, go back three stitches or two stitches, wherever you've done and then continue your seam stitching. That's just to hold it in place. What that does is it locks the end of the thread so that it doesn't unravel and fall out later on. Now they've back tacked, you can go ahead and sew along a quarter-inch while pulling out your pins. Not everybody pulls their pins out, some people don't mind. But usually what happens when you leave your pin in on the piece is you run over it and it bends your pen and sometimes it opens up a hole in your fabric that you don't really want so it's good practice just to be safe about that. But now go ahead. Sew quarter-inch all the way along the edge. At the end, just like we did at the beginning of the scene, get to the end of the line that you're sewing, reverse 2-3 stitches, and then go forward two stitches again, pull your thread out, get your scissors, pull this away, and you can cut it away and that's a top stitch on that piece right here. Now what I like to do for details sake is do another stitch at an eighth of an inch, between the edge and that quarter-inch stitch you just put in there. Take it back to your machine and so align the same exact way at an eighth of an inch. Remember, make sure you start with the back tack, two stitches forward, two stitches back, and then go all the way around. You do not have to go this fast. Get to the end, back tack 2, 3 stitches, go back forward, 2, 3 stitches, pull it out, snip it away. Always make sure to clean your threads off by cutting them away, the excess thread that you got. Now, look at that double top stitch. It's a nice little detail. Anyone who sees that is going to go, two top stitches. Only specific people might notice that and care, but it will help it lasts longer. It makes it more durable and it's also just nice knowing that you did it. The effort goes a long way when you're trying to create a piece that's going to last for a while. 6. Finish Pocket Bag: This is the beginning of what we call a French seam. This is one of the nicest things that you do. Like I mentioned today, we're doing a flat-felled seam, Hong Kong seam, and we're going to be working on this French seam. This is the first place that you're going to see a French seam done. You're going to take the wrong side of the fabric and attach it to the wrong side. The right side in a pocket would be the inside, it's where you put your hands in. Right here, you slide your hand in there. That's the right side of the inside. What you're doing is you're taking the wrong side and attaching it to the wrong side because with the pocket, we're going to flip this inside out to create it. You've got to start like this. What you're going to do is you're going to match everything up. There's a notch at this bottom corner, right here. There you go, and you can see it. You cut it on both pocket pieces. You're going to pin all the way around, make sure you match up that notch to make sure everything is where it needs to be. Pin there first and then match up everything else and pin around the edges. What we're going to do after this is we're going to sew along this entire edge at a quarter of an inch, not a half-inch. I know there's a half an inch seam allowance, but what we're going to do is sew a quarter of an inch first along the edge, flip it inside out, trim some of that excess seam allowance away, and then so another quarter of an inch. I'm going to show you what that looks like just in case you're a little confused. Check it out. We've got the whole edge pinned. Get your sewing machine again, find that quarter-inch mark on your sewing machine so you know where to put everything. Pop this pocket on, line it up at a quarter of an inch from the edge and per usual, start two stitches forward, two stitches back for that back tack to lock the thread in. Then you're going to go a quarter of an inch all the way around the edge. Since we're doing a technical scene, we're putting two pieces together that can pull apart, move back down to a smaller stitch length. If you did go ahead and move to that three and 3.5 range, go back down. Stitch, back tack. Now go all the way around at a quarter of an inch. Now at the end, make sure you back tack two stitches and then come forward two stitches lock that thread in. Pull this out, get your scissors, snip away the excess thread. Do the same thing at the top. It's good practice to constantly just keep cleaning up where you're working on, so that way at the end, you don't mess anything up or forget anything. Now, look at that stitch. We've got a stitch running a quarter of an inch all the way around here. What we're going to do now is take our scissors and we're going to trim away around half of what's here. We trim that away. Remember when you do the other pocket, you're mirroring everything. It's not going to be exactly like this, it's going to be flipped. Make sure you're keeping that in mind. Same thing for the pant legs, same thing for everything that's mirrored on the other pant leg. You get your arm, put this down here. What we're going to do now is we're going to flip this inside out. Take this, open it up, flip it inside out. Use your iron to flatten down the seams. You're going to have to go in here. Just push it to one side, that's good enough. Do the same thing at the bottom. You're just flattening it down, getting it ready. You're going to take your iron and now go back over it, flattening that seam down, making it nice and flat because you're about to sew another seam at a quarter of an inch. You're going to catch that excess seam allowance that you just left out there in this new seam that you created. There we go. Bring your machine back. Now you're going to do the same thing along this edge. You're going to sew a quarter-inch all the way down and around per usual, make sure you back tack at the beginning and the end. What you're doing is you're catching your seam allowance instead of a normal seam where you just sew it at a half-inch and you iron it down and it's got raw edges. What you're doing now is you're sewing at a quarter of an inch. The first time you trimmed away some excess, you folded it inside out and you're sewing at another quarter of an inch, which is catching that excess in the next quarter of an inch. When I'm done, you're going to see what I'm talking about. Pop it on the machine. Find that quarter-inch mark so you know where you're sewing at. Start with a back tack. Now I'm at the end. Make sure to back tack. Same thing, open it up, get your scissors, cut the excess thread away at the top or the beginning of the stitch. Now, what you've got is a French seam. Remember because you initially sew the wrong side to the wrong side, you had that seam allowance sticking out. Then you folded it inside out and you put that seam allowance on the inside, and then you sewed another line at a quarter of an inch. All of that raw edge is now caught in this seam you just created. That's a French seam. It's the best way to do it. Now that we've got this French seam done on this pocket, this is the pocket bag, that's what you call this. This is done. Now, to finish off the front pattern leg to get it ready for sewing the actual pant body, you take this pattern leg. As you can see, these two edges right here match. This is the edge on the front pattern piece, this is the edge on the upper pocket bag right here. What we're going to be doing right now is we're going to attach these two pieces, which is then going to fill this gap, creating the full side seam of this pant leg. What we do now, make this flap like this. You're going to take this and you're going to flip it. You're going to attach the inside pieces to this. You're taking this and you're doing that. Match them up, take this. Just to clarify, this is the inside of the pocket bag. You are taking the inside of the pocket bag, this upper pocket bag right here, taking it and putting it on the right side of the front pant leg. What you're going to do is you're going to sew a half-inch along this line, flip it over. What it's going to do is it's going to fill that gap of space that's on the side seam right here that's going to end up looking something like this, a lot smaller because obviously we haven't sewn it properly yet, but it's going to fill that gap and create a proper full side seam. If you didn't want pockets, all you would have to do on your pattern is go ahead and just draw that section in and fill it in. You can use your pocket to create the gap so you know what the shape is going to be like, and that's if you don't want pockets. I personally want pockets on everything, but if you don't, you don't have to have them. Here we go. Now that this is pinned, what I like to do with this bottom section here just because it moves around, it's a little flimsy, just take an extra pin and just do a little sturdy pin to keep it in place, now you've got this pinned. You're going to take this back to your sewing machine and you're going to sew along this edge at a half an inch. Find your half-inch line, per usual. What I always say, make sure you do your back tack. Take that sturdy pen out if it's in the way and now you're going to go at a half-inch all the way along this edge. That's your seam allowance here. Back tack, pull this up, take this out. Go ahead, snip away that extra thread. Put your sewing machine to the side, get your ironing mat or board, get your iron, and then open it up to that clean side over here. What you're going to do is iron it down. There you go. Now that that's ironed down like this, now you're going to take it again with the seam allowance now on the inside. As you can see here, you've created a clean edge, the seam allowance is on the inside because you just flipped it. Now go ahead, take your iron and sew over this, creating a clean finish. What we're going to do, the last step of connecting this, you don't have to do it. It's just a nice way to finish it off. You're going to top stitch at a quarter of an inch along this edge. What that does is it holds it together so that way when the pant is done, this part isn't moving around and opening. This top stitch keeps it down and keeps it in place. Now get your sewing machine again. As you can see, the pocket bag fills into this space very nicely. That's where your hand enters into the pocket. What you're going to do is you're going to sew quarter-inch along this edge. Sometimes, since the pocket bag is not fully attached, you just want to put a pin in to keep it in place. Even myself at this point, I still need to make sure I have a little help. But once you put that in, go ahead. What you're doing is along that diagonal line, like I said again, you're doing a quarter-inch top stitch. Start with a back tack to lock that thread in. Now sew all the way up at a quarter of an inch. Finish it off with the back tack. Pull it out, snip it, clean up the thread. Pull the pin out or any pins you may have used. Don't be afraid to over pin things if it helps you. Just like that, the pocket bag is now attached to the front pant piece. Look at that gap, it's filled in and we've created a full proper side seam. This is what the pocket looks like, your hand can go inside, and that's the front pant piece done. Now, I'm going to go ahead, finish off the other pant leg. Make sure everything is ready to go. Then we're going to meet in the next lesson where we're going to be actually putting this pant together and learning some really good finishings for the seams. 7. Prepare Your Waistband: [MUSIC] Now that we just finished the pockets, we're moving on to putting the waistband together. I like to get the waistband done now because that way you have everything put together. You can get some more fabric pattern pieces off the table, so it's not too cluttered in your space and that way, when you finish the paint body in the next lesson, we can put it all together. First thing to note here is you're going to take this, this is the iron-on interfacing that we cut, and you're going to be ironing it on to the self-cut straight grain pattern piece that we cut for the waistband as well. The third thing that you're going to need for this, is the underway span, which you cut on the bias. We talked about bias being an angle you need to cut on to make it just a little bit more stretchy, so it has some give. Also, one thing just to note, on a man's trouser pattern, what we have over here is the waistband extension. That's what you need to match up to the fly guard. This piece right here is considered the fly guard. When we get it all done and sew it together, it's going to be folded in half. I'm going to be showing you that in a later lesson. It's very simple, but it needs to match up with this distance right here. These two pieces match up. For me, I'm cutting a size medium, so that's why I'm working with a solid line. If you were doing a size small, you'd be working with this line, and if you're doing other sizes based on the size key map that I gave you, it would be these other lines. I'm in medium, so I'm in the solid line. These are the notches I'm going to work with today for myself. Now that you know that, it's important to note that what I'm creating is a men's waistband, if you're doing a woman's waistband , everything is flipped. You'll be able to see on the woman's waistband that these notches all on this side will be on the opposite side because you're doing everything flipped. Now we're going to start putting this thing together. Get your ironing board or your ironing mat. Get this straight grain pattern piece that you cut, not the bias, the bias one is not going to be ironed on the interface, it's just the straight-grain piece. You're going to take this, put it under, use your notches to match everything up. I'm looking for my center notches. My center notch on this piece on my straight grain piece is right there. My center notch on my iron-on interfacing piece is right here so just go ahead and match those up. Match the rest of the notches you've clipped as well and then you're good to go and start ironing these two pieces together. Take your iron, and start ironing. Since this is glue, really what you're doing right now is you're melting the glue. Since the iron is hot enough, you're melting it, and you're basically bonding it to the actual pattern piece that you're working with, the straight grain cut piece of self-fabric, the muslin that you're working with, the cotton. Take your time and make sure that is settled. Sometimes it's good to just really make sure that it's hot and melted on there because I've had times where I've finished ironing it and I missed the little corner, and it just stripped away. It's always good to take your time with these things. You should never be in a rush. Look at that. Here is your waistband piece now with the iron-on interfacing ironed on. There you can see in the back, look, move it around, doesn't fall off, that's because the glue is now really attached it on. There you go. Interfacing is now on. Now what you're going to do is you're going to pin. You're going to need these notches that you've cut to match everything up, you're going to get your underway span, that's the one that was cut on the bias. You're going to take what you've just created, the interfacing now bonded with the self-fabric, and you're going to match them up. Look for all those notches. Here's my waistband extension notch, that little two-inch gap of space that I told you about that you're going to attach to the fly guard later on. If you don't know what that means or what I'm talking about, we haven't done it yet, so it's okay if you're a little confused. Right now, you just have to worry about matching all these notches up, and then I'm going to teach you how to sew and create the waistband. Match up your notches, get your pins right here, pin all the way around the side seam, the top seam, and the other side seam. But you're going to be leaving the bottom seam open as well because you're going to flip this thing inside out when you're done. That bottom seam that's open, you're going to take that and that's what you're going to attach to the seam on the pant body. That's why you're leaving the bottom open for this one. Once again, look for your notches, here's another notch. Here's the side seam notch right there, the other side seam notch, put them together, go ahead and pin [MUSIC] Just so you know, what we want to do is make sure that this interfacing is on the outside while we pin so that way when we sew it and flip it inside out, all of this is going to move on to the inside, so we can't see it just so it does its job of just providing structure secretly inside the waistband. It's not meant to be seen. Since we're pinning right now, make sure it's on the outside as we pin, and keep in mind that it's going to fold to the inside. Pinning the last side seam. Like I said, you're just pinning the two sides seams and the top seam. This is where you should be all right now. The side seam right here, pinned, all the way along the top, pinned and the other side seam over here, pinned. Now this bottom space is all open. The curve's sloping up is what should be open, and this curve at the top of it should be closed [MUSIC] 8. Construct Your Waistband: Now what we're going to do, we're going to get our sewing machines out. We're going to sew this public couched. Take your waistband. Pop it on here. I'm going to say it again. I'll say it a million times. Always make sure to start with a backpack that's two stitches forward to stitch back. Sometimes you do three, whatever makes you comfortable, it's fine. It's just about locking the thread and making it sturdy and strong so it doesn't fall out later on. We're sewing this at a half-inch seam allowance and we're going to be doing corners today. Very easy, very fun corners. Now at a half-inch, put your threatened, make sure you're at a sturdy stitch length. I like to work with 2.5 depending on what machine you have, even if it's an industrial, you'll be able to gauge that and change that based on what you like. But right now, we're working with a strong, tighter stitch length. Two steps forward, two back. One thing you have to keep in mind right now is that you're about to hit a corner and you're not going to have to turn to continue doing the same at the top. Take a look at what we're doing here. You're going to go slowly, take your time. Don't go with Joe's speed. Take your pins out as you go and if it helps you to draw a line, you can do that. But right now, what we're doing is we're not going to go all the way through on this. Normally, we've just been going all the way through on seams. Right now, we're going to go all the way until half an inch to the end of the seam because that's where the new seam starts for the top seam. Watch this. Right here, take your time. What I like to do is when I get there, I like to turn this thing and just judge if it's at the right spot. Normally, at least with my sewing machine, the edge of this foot signifies a half-inch. That's how I know I'm sewing along that half-inch seam allowance line that I've given you. What you're going to do is check there's a little bit more space here. That means I'm not there yet. Like I said, if you want to draw a pencil at the top of this thing, just to show where the half-inch line is, that's totally fine. But since I have a little space there, I've got one more stitch. Go ahead and use this hand-cranked to take it slow. Check it again. There, now I'm at a half-inch from the top. Now we're going to be going in stitching along here. But the first thing you do that you always do at corners because corners are really sensitive spot. When we flip this inside out, I'm going to be taking any form of like a semi-sharp object and poking that corner out. You need to make sure the corner is sturdy. At the corner, before you start going along the top seam here, you're going to backtrack two again, just like we did at the beginning of the scene. Go two again, forward back to where you were. That's creating more sturdiness. You're doing more stitches on top of one another to make it a very sturdy corner. Now you're turning it from here, where you've already done your backpack at the corner. Now you're going onto the top seam, you're going to do the same thing, two stitches forward, two stitches back and now we can go ahead and finish the seam. What you've done is just created a very strong corner One thing to keep in mind is every time that you're pulling up this foot to pull a pin out or do whatever, you want to make sure that the needle is down, holding this in place so that way, you don't lose your seam. If you were to pull it up and pull this needle out and then move this around, what it does is it will take the thread and give it more slack and it will loosen your seam up. Always make sure when you're lifting this foot to take a pin out, make sure that the needle is down in the fabric Just to hammer at home, we're about to hit another corner. You're doing the same exact thing. You're going to go up to that corner. You're not going to go all the way through the seam. You're going to go up to a half-inch from the edge of the fabric. Go ahead, start sewing. Get as close as you need to that half-inch space. Keep the needle in the fabric so that way, you can pick up the foot and check how far from the edge you are. That's pretty good right there. It's pretty close to the edge. I'm going to do one more just to get me a little closer. There we go and now that you're at this corner piece, you're going to backtrack two stitches. Go forward again, two stitches. Flip this thing. Now you've done a little double stitch there. You've made a very strong and firm. Do the same thing here before starting this last stitch right here all the way to the end to finish out the waistband. Two stitches back and now go ahead and go forward. Finish this seam out. For good measure and getting a good habits, go ahead and cut that dangly least threat at the beginning that you don't need anymore. Now we're going to hit some corners and now you're going to understand why I said you need to backtrack. Take anything you have. It can be a dull pencil. It can be a little screwdriver like this. Right here at that corner we just created, you're going to take this, take your scissors. What you're going to do is you're going to cut it to a point just like this. You're not going to cut all the way to that corner, you're going to cut just away from it just like around an eighth of an inch away. You don't want to cut into it because obviously, if you break the thread seam here, you're going to open this thing up and it's not going to be very nice. You're cutting this close to that corner and you're going to do the same exact thing here. Why we do that is because when we fold this thing inside out, there's not going to be a whole bunch of bulk of this excess fabric we just cut away. Take it now, fold it inside out and look at this corner right here. It's very bulky or it's a little weird. That's why you got to take this thing right here. Whatever pointy object you have, not too pointy because you don't want to rip through it. A knife would definitely rip through this, something that's like dull points. As you can see, what I'm using here has a little flat top to it, so it's not too sharp. You're going to take it and you're going to really gently push that corner out. Just like that. Look at that. Just created a corner, a nice little corner right there, and just so you have the visual and so you know what it looks like on the side where we haven't cut away the excess fabric here. Watch what happens when you fold it inside out. Watch what happens if I try to poke it. It's not really working. I swear I'm not faking this, it's actually just not working. There's just too much bulk, that excess fabric that we haven't cut away on this corner yet. I'll get in cotton bunched up in there. Cutting that away is what allows you to get that nice sharp corner when you poke it out. Go back to the inside out and look for the stitch right here. Take your scissors, same thing, a nice little diagonal line going to that corner space. Move that away. Do the same thing right next to it and take your time and be careful because you don't want to cut through that thread. That'll create problems and it could cause you to have to start over. Don't feel like you're in a rush. Take your time. Same thing. Take it, fold it inside out. Look how much easier it is this time, look at that. Take your little dog pointy object. Look at that, comes right out. You've got yourself a nice little corner, look at that. It's the best corner I've ever seen. Now what you're going to do, fold it back inside out. Since this is a curved surface right here, it's not naturally made to fall and be folded inside out and fall flat. What I like to do is just give it a couple of snips because it takes the tension out. One right here at the middle. Do one at the side seam, do one at the other side seam. Then do one between the center back and the side seam on both sides. Now take it, fold it back to being inside out. Get your ironing board and now what we're going to try and do is we're just trying to get this thing flat. Use your hands to pull this thing apart. Not too hard. You don't want to rip it. It shouldn't rip because you did a good stitch, but hold it like this, put it flat, and then push this seam allowance to one side and now go over that. Lay it flat. Here we go, we're going to keep doing that all the way along the seam Now that you've ironed this down, it's flattened it in a way that makes it a lot easier. When you folded inside out completely, it's going to fall a little bit more flat. It's going to make it easier to, in a more perfect way, iron this seam down. Cool. There we go. Look how clean that looks now, use your hands. Just keep things in place. Nice, look at that little corner right there. You got all that excess out. Now you've got yourself a nice little corner. Look at that soft flat, so laying nice. In this next lesson, we're going to go ahead and actually add belt loops to the waistband. It's totally optional if you don't want belt loops, but I recommend them. I'm the person who wears a belt with my pants even if they fit. We're going to go for belt loops now. 9. Add Belt Loops: Now that you've got the waistband done, we're going to add belt loops. There is a pattern piece included with this for the belt loops. It's a little square. You're going to cut out six of them, six of these little squares and I'm going to show you how to put them together. Once you cut them, they should look like this. The same thing, just a little square, and the seam allowance on the sides is a quarter of an inch. Now what you're going to do is you're going to get your belt loops, draw those quarter-inch seam allowance lines, boom. Here's one more boom, and it's a half-inch at the end. This will all be marked on that pattern. Boom, it'll look like that. These are the lines that you're going to iron on, fold along this quarter-inch line at the edge. Take your iron, iron that down, and do the other one and you're going to see that they meet and kiss at the middle right here. Iron it down. Check it out, see, they meet at the middle right here. This is where you should be at right now, look at that. You're going to get your sewing machine again, get that belt loop that you just put together, and what you're going to do is from each edge you are going to sew an eighth of an inch in from that edge. What that does is on the backside where all this raw stuff is, it's going to hold it down so it doesn't split apart whenever you're using it. This is how you make things nice and sturdy. These are the little details that actually really do pay off and keep your pants together. From the edge eighth of an inch per usual, pop your needle in. Like I said, start with a backtack it goes a long way. You're going to repeat this step six different times. Now you're doing the other side of the belt loop. Start with the backtack, finish with the backtack. Pull this thing off, snip away the thread. Now, what you should have is this right here. You still have a half inch of seam allowance on the top and a half inch on the bottom that you're going to fold under when you attach it to the actual waistband. But right here, that's your belt loop and you're going to do six of these. You're going to take that half-inch seam allowance at the top right here. You've got a half-inch up here, half-inch down there. Just like you can see on this pattern piece right here, that's a half-inch of space at the top. Draw in that half-inch line, I'm going to do it once just so we're all on the same page. That's where you're going to be folding. Fold this over at that line. Get your iron, iron it down. On the other side now, get your iron, iron it down. Do that six times and then your belt loops are ready and then we're going to attach the belt loops to the waistband. Because you notched our center back, that's the middle of the waistband right here. There's my center back notch. Go ahead and look for yours. What we're going to do is we're going to start these belt loops a half inch from the center back of the waistband. You're going to place them snug right at the top of your waistband here, you're going to do it on both sides. Use your ruler to find that half-inch starting spot. Here's the center back, half inch from the center back starting a half inch from the center back. Here's a half inch of space between the center back and where that belt loop starts. Go ahead, take your pen and pin it just at the top. We're only sewing the top of the belt loops onto this waist now and then we're sewing the bottom of them to the actual pant body. What we're going to do is we're going to put all six of these belt loops on so the tops of them and then leave the bottom of them open, not attached to anything. We're only doing that at the end. First one is placed and then we're doing another belt loop at the side seam. Look for that side seam notch. There we go. Here's my side seam notch right here. Go ahead, same thing. Place this right in the middle of that. Snug, right at the top. Check that out. Take a pin. Pin it down. Boom, there you go. Same thing on the other sides. Right here, half-inch from the side. Pin it down, good to go. I like to place my belt loops that go at the front by where the zipper or you're hooking eyes will be at the end of this. Find that space. Find the center front. First thing first, one side, like I said, has an extension spot. Has an extension to attach to the fly guard. The center front starts where that extension starts so we're going to start with the side that doesn't have that extension. You'll know what side that is by the notch that we have marked on it. One side of this waistband has a notch marked for the extension. The other one just is directly the center front. There's no extension on one side of this waistband. What we're going to do from the side that does not have that notch that shows where the extension is we're going to take our ruler, put the three-inch mark at the edge so you can find out where the three inches starts and you're going to take this belt loop. There we go. See three inches of space right here. Pin that top right down, cool. Now go to the other side. Take your final belt loop. There's your notch that shows the extensions there. That's going to be your center front line. Like on the other side we went from the edge. Because this is extended, you need to go from this notch so go ahead, create the visual of where it is. This is your line from this notch right here, three inches away because that's your new center front for this side. Take your belt loop at the end of that three inches of space. In this case, because we have the extension just so you know, it's going to be five inches from the actual edge here. Pin that down. There you go. Now all of your belt loops are pinned. Take your sewing machine. Now what you're going to do is an eighth of an inch from the top and you're going to go ahead and sew a little stitch only along the length of the actual belt loop. You're not going to continue it on all the way, you're just doing on the belt loops. Go ahead and sew. Backtack per usual, backtack again. You want this to be sturdy. It's the belt loop. It's going to be holding up the weight of the pant onto your body. Make sure you go ahead and backtack as much as you feel like you need because you want to make it sturdy. Cut these little threads away. Snip, now go ahead and sew that eighth of an inch to the rest of them, all six of them. Then we're going to move on from the waistband section. Check it out. Now, your waistband is done. You've got the belt loops on. So now we're going to move on to the next lesson where we're going to start putting this actual thing together. See you in the next lesson. 10. Add Darts to Pants: [MUSIC] We've made it to the part where we actually start putting the pant body together. What you need for this section is you're going to need your front pant and your back pant piece. The first thing we're going to do is we're going to put these darts together. For those of you who don't know what darts are, darts are these little triangular angles that we put into the back pants. Take your back pant pattern piece, match it up again. You're going to take your pencil, go to that bottom point right here, and don't be afraid to get messy. Go ahead and aggressively just push through here. What I want to do is create that dart point. Push through here. What you want from that is to be able to fold this open and then see these two little dots. It might be a little too fine, but the point is you want to make a pencil mark right where those darts are ending. If you haven't done it yet, take your scissors, go in, snip at the top here, snip at the top there. Same thing with the other one snip at the top right there. Now you can take this, go ahead. Because this is the inside of the pant, that's why I'm drawing the dart lines here. That makes your life a little bit easier. Find that pencil mark you did here for the bottom of the dart, and find that notch for the legs. There's two; draw a little line there, draw a little line there. Go do the same exact thing to the other dart; draw a little line there, draw a little line there. Now what you're going to do, you're going to pinch this closed and you're going to do your best to match up those two lines you drew. What I like to do is I like to take my pin and just feed it through on one line and then check the other side to make sure it went through the line here. I just pinned on this side. Look at the other side. It made it through that line. That means you know it's matched up. Go ahead, continue that all the way down the dart until you get to the final point. Then what I like to do is the last pin that we're putting on this dart, I like to put the last pin where I know the dart is going to end. Here's the endpoint right there of the dart. Take your pin and put it through that. That way you know, that as you're sewing down, you're going to a point. At that point, you know this is where you're going to end. Go ahead, pin both of these. [MUSIC] Get your sewing machine. Now what we're going to do is you always start at the top of the dart. Start at the top of the dart, backtack two stitches per usual. Now go ahead. All the way down that line you just drew, you are going to be going to essentially nothing. You're not sewing a seam, you're sewing to a point. As you get to that point, you're not going to backtack. What you're going to do is you're going to tie off a knot. As you get to that end point, sew all the way to the end, and when you get to the end, you're going to lift your needle, you're going to lift your presser foot, you're going to pull away. Pull this needle out, that last one. Now that you've pulled away, take your scissors and go ahead and cut enough of slack. So you have a good amount of slack right here at the end of the dart. You're going to take these two pieces of thread right right at the end, and you're going to go ahead and you're going to tie a knot. There's one, there's two. I like to do three to make sure it's going to last forever. Now that you've tied three off, that's how you finish off a dart. The reason we do that is because the backtack at the end of a dart, that's just a very sensitive spot and it could unravel over time. That's why we always do a knot here. Go ahead, trim away that excess, throw it away, trim away that excess. Now go ahead and complete the same thing on every single dart. Obviously you're mirroring two back pattern pieces so if you're doing the darts like this on the inside here, you're going to have to on the other pant, have them facing inside this way so that way they mirror and you're going to be able to create two different pant legs that are obviously not the same leg. Now your darts are done. Lay this flat, get your iron, and you're just going to iron those darts flat towards the side seam. Check it out right here, darts here and here. Not facing this way, facing this way towards your hips. [MUSIC] 11. Sew Flat Felled Outseam: Got your darts done. What we going to do is we're going to start sewing the outseam of this pants. How are we going to do that is we're doing something called a flat felled seam. It's a nice finish. It's very sturdy. Often you see it on something like jeans and denim. What we're going to do is we're going to take the wrong side of the fabric, the wrong side of each one. Imagine this is the wrong side right here, inside. Wrong side right there on the inside. If you want to mark it for yourself on this first go around, feel free to do it. Now what we're going to do is take this outseam right here. This is the outseam of the back. This is the outseam of the inside, and we're going to go ahead and match up our notches. First things first, find your knee notch. That's halfway between this hip space right here and your hem. There it is for me. There's this one right here, and then there's another notch right there. Match those up. Then go ahead, go to the hem. Look for the notch right here, another notch there, match that up. Look at that. The main thing to do with this is make sure your pocket is laying flat because we haven't fully attached the pocket in outside of just this entrance seam right here, this entrance point to the pocket. This is still flowing freely right here, and this is still flowing freely right here. To help you out, what I would like to do, to keep it down is put a pin in it. That'll keep it sturdy there, keep it in place. Right here on the top as well, throw a pin in right there to keep this in place there. Next what we're doing, is we're just going to be pinning all the way up the side seam, making sure they meet at the top. Also, just so you know, normally on a back-part piece, there's a little bit extra space, there's a little bit tiny amount more length. That's to create something called ease. What ease is, it's just that little bit of give that little extra bit of space you need to fit into things that are your size. Check it out. You see this. You see how it feels like one side has a little bit more slack, just pull it and then it snug together right there. Now I'm all pinned along my outseam. Got the half inch seam allowance. What you're going to do is you're going to sew down this entire side seam at a half of an inch seam allowance. You start with your backtack, put your needle in two stitches forward, two stitches back. Now you're going all the way up that side seam. Lift your needle up. Pull it out. Snip it here. Now, you're going to have a lot of fraying here. Just go ahead and trim away that fraying. Just a little bit, not a lot, literally just these excess threads that are sticking out that are making it all messy. Now what we're going to do for the next step of the flat felled seam, is we're going to cut away some seam allowance, but not on both pieces of the pattern, only on the back. There's two seam allowances here. This over here is the left, that's the front side, and on the right here is the backside. What we're going to do now is we're going to trim away on the backside, the back pattern piece. We're going to cut this down to pretty much half. Essentially you're cutting away a quarter of an inch. Take your scissors and start trimming away roughly half. Get your ironing mat or a board. This is where things start with the flat felled seam. Check this out. You've got that seam that's been cut down to pretty much half. Now what you're going to do is you're going to iron this down. What I like to do first is I like to iron the shorter seam allowance over the longer seam allowance, facing to the right in my case. It depends on the leg that you're on, but you're putting this shorter seam allowance, over the longer seam allowance. It's just going to be some good prep for you. It's going to make your life easier for the next few steps. Now what we're going to do is you're going to take this long seam allowance side and you're going to fold it over towards the back over that seam allowance that we just cut down to a quarter of an inch, and here's what you're going to do. You're going to iron it down. Nice see. Now it's covered. Fold that over and do that all the way up along the edge of this thing. Then do one more fold, taking that raw edge away. That's what a flat felled seam is. We're going to do another stitch right along the edge, right here, right along that outer edge to hold it down. For the second fold, you do need to iron. It will make your life a whole lot easier, and look at that. Very nice, super nice and clean right there. Just a little example like I was talking about with those fraying threads, those being the pain, look right here. You see that little thread sticking out? If you trim that away, you won't have to pull it out later or you can just tuck it under. Normally, I'd recommend just cutting it away. You never know if it's just going to be a problem because it's in there. The only place that things might get a little bit more difficult with this is when you get to the pocket section. Because you've had that pocketing in there, there's a couple of layers of fabric instead of just two like we've been doing up to this point, so you're really just going to have to get comfortable working with your hands on this part. I know it's going to feel a little bit awkward, but will make your life a lot easier. What I like to do is on the parts where you can, because obviously when you get up here, the pocket is attached completely through here. Just to get rid of some bulk, I like to just trim away a little bit of that pocket. As you can see right here, this white fabric is the pocketing. It's not the main body fabric. Just trim a little bit of that excess away to make your life just a little bit easier. See. Get rid of this. Just at that bottom part, just where the pocket ends on the bottom there's that little bulky spot. It's just going to help you a little bit. Now we've done it all the way up. Take these pins and you're going to pin parallel to this line all the way up, and we just hold it in place. Where we're at right now, is we're going to stitch this edge right here as close as you feel like you can get, as comfortable as you are, get it close to that edge. I would call it a 16th of an inch from this outside edge right here, sew down right there. I'll show you how to do it. If that's too close, just get as close as you can get to hold this down. We're nearing to that section that I said has the pocket bulk. Just make sure to work with your hands while you get there and keep that under. For me, it's hard to get a pin through so many layers of fabric sometimes, so take your slow little time and work your way through that bulk of fabric in that section. Backtack to lock that thread in, lift your needle up, pull away, snip it away. Move this bad boy to the side. What I like to do, is just get that iron mat out one more time and then just do a nice little last iron run over to flatten things out to keep it clean. Good practice to constantly iron things, iron your seams flat. Here we go. You can probably get a good look at this while I'm ironing over it, but check it out. This is a flat felled seam. What you've done is you've caught that seam allowance, all that extra fraying, in this space right here. We're just finishing off the ironing. One thing I mentioned at the beginning of the class is something called the ironing hem. You don't have to have this, but this is why you should have it. It helps you iron out these curves a lot more easily. Obviously, ironing board is flat, hips are not flat. So having something like this where you can work with all the different little curves around it. Use this curve on this side. It makes it a little bit more natural to actually iron this thing. Check it out. Now you're actually ironing it on a hip shape in place the way it should be not flat. There you go. It's done. Pull this thing out. This right here is a flat felled seam. Next, we're going to be moving on to the inseam where we're going to be doing another French seam. We've already learned how to do it. We're just going to hammer it home and try it one more time, this time on a longer seam. Then we're moving to the crop scene where we're going to do a Hong Kong bound seam finish. Then we're pretty much done with the pant body and we're going to hit the zipper. So stay tuned for that 12. Sew Inseams: Now we're moving on to the inseam. The inseam, we're going to be doing another French seam. We already did that on the pocket. This is just a little bit more practice but this is a nice way to finish off the inseam. The reason that we're not doing a flat felled seam on both sides, normally, you can't do two flat felled seams on a pant like this, is because when we did the flat felled seam, you needed to be able to open up this pant in order to be able to finish it off at the top. But when this is sewn closed, you're not going to be able to stick this on the sewing machine without getting what's behind it caught in the actual thread under it. That's why you can't do it twice. That's why normally you will see a flat felled seam only on the out-seam, and then you have to do something else for the inseam. Again, we're painting right side to right side. You want the part of the pant that's going to be showing to be sticking out right now and the part that's not to be on the inside, just like how we started last time. As you can see here, I marked the wrong side. Here's an x and here's an x to show that this is the inside of the pant and on the outside of the pant, as you can see, you don't see the dots on the outside. We did the flat felled seam and you got the pocket on the front of the pant showing. You want to do wrong side to wrong sides. Wrong side to wrong side. What you're going to do is pin down this seam. Per usual, make sure you match up your notches. Here's a notch here, little notch right there. That's the knee line. Another little notch right there. Go ahead match that up first. Go ahead pin all the way up to the top. Same thing at the bottom. Where the pant is, there's a notch right there. There's a notch right there. We're all pinned along the inseam, wrong side to wrong side. Just like I talked about before, with the French seam, we're going to go ahead and we're going to sew this at a quarter inch all the way down. Start with a back tuck like usual. I'm starting from the top from where the crotch is. It doesn't actually matter. Cool, seems done. Pick your needle up, pull it away, cut the thread. Now what we're going to do, is we're going to go ahead and trim that seam allowance down. I would say just under half of it away. Because then what we're doing next, is we're flipping it inside out, and then we're catching that seam allowance in the new stitch that we're about to do just like we did on that pocket earlier today. That's trimmed away. Now that we've trimmed, what we're going to do is you're going to flip this pant inside out. Because I like to finger press, what I'm going to do, is I'm just going to go straight to the inside out and use my hands to just finger press this down for when I can iron it. Here, Check it out. See, I'm just creasing it as if it was paper. You can roll it. You can slide it and roll it until you get right to that seam, right where you push it on out. Go ahead and make sure you do that all the way up this inseam. Now, take your iron, iron on over it, flatten it down, make it nice and clean. Now that that's ironed down, put your iron away, keep it handy because you're going to need it one more time. Bring your sewing machine here. Now, we're going to be sewing again along the inseam at a quarter of an inch. What that does, is you're catching that excess seam allowance that you created here that you just trimmed away in another seam, just like you did with the pocket. Pull out the thread back tuck at the end of the stitch. Snip away those long threads that are left behind, flip it right side out. Start ironing away at this French seam you just created. Nice. Then iron all the way to the top. Just like that, you just created another French seam. If you want to take a little peek at the inside of this thing again, look at that. What you just did with the French seam is you sewed at a quarter of an inch first and then you trimmed away that seam allowance. What you just did with that seam allowance, is you sewed another quarter of an inch catching that seam allowance in this little space right here. It's similar to the flat felled seam except just a little bit different in how you process it and go through it. But look at this space right here. Inside of this thing, inside of this little tube is the seam allowance. You won't get any fraying out of this. This is one of the nicest ways to finish off a seam. Now we're going to be moving on to doing a Hong Kong stitch, Hong Kong seam finish on the crotch seam. Get ready for that. Grab your bias tape, that's what we need next and grab some pins. 13. Create Hong Kong Seam Finish: Get your bias tape. I've got two options here today. I've got a blue bias tape and I've got to white bias tape. The reason I'm going to use the blue bias tape is because I want you to be able to see the contrast of what I'm actually doing. The main thing to keep in mind when you're doing one of these finishes, the Hong Kong specifically, is the crotch seam allowance is going to fold over and you want to make sure you see the prettier side of the work you're about to do. Make sure this pant is right-side out. This is how the pant should look when it's on the body. Right here, this is the crotch that we're working with. All the way around, starts here, goes around, continues up through the center back. This is the center back here. This is the center front right here. What we're doing is we're taking this bias tape, and normally, just a heads up with bias tape, you can always see that there's one side that's a little bit longer than the other in terms of its width. This side right here, check it out. You can see the entirety of the width. You only see this side, but when you flip it, you can see that small, little, little tiny bit that's poking out on top. That's how you know that this side, the shorter side, is the side that you're going to start with. This is how we're going to do this. This is the crotch seam. You want to make sure that the prettier side is going to be showing facing you, facing up. What you're going to do, unfold this bias tape. Start with the shorter side. See how one side is a little bit longer in the back. The side on top here is shorter. Unfold this side right here to reveal these crease lines. What you're going to do, you're going to go to this crotch. Give yourself a little bit of extra space on top, just in case you have a little mess up or whatever or something bunches here, it's nice to have a little extra starting spot to so on. Just go a little bit longer. Let me just show you. Just like a quarter of an inch is fine. See how that blue is sticking out beyond the canvas right here. There you go. Now what you're going to do, you're going to start pinning along this first crease line right here. All the way around the crotch. Pin that. This requires a little hand work. You'll get used to it. Take your time, don't get frustrated. You're going to pin along that seam line the entire way. That seam line is pretty much a quarter of an inch. Once you've got it pinned all the way around on the right side of the fabric, now what you're going to do is pretty much either at a quarter of an inch or just following that crease line, you're going to sew all the way around that crotch. Then we're going to meet up after that. You go to the next step. Backtrack at the end, pull the needle out, pull this out, cut the thread. Move this to the side. Now what you're going to do is where you just sewed, same as before, you're going to trim away that seam allowance. This space right here, we just sew that a quarter of an inch. Now trim this away to about half. Just like we've been doing with a lot of these seams, trim this thing down to clean it up. Because what you're about to do again is catch that seam allowance, except you're catching it this time in this, inside this Hong Kong bias tape. Now that you've trimmed that away, we're just going to iron around the edge of this bias tape where it was just sewn on. You just want to flatten this section right here where it connects to the actual fabric here. Where the body of the pant is connecting to this bias tape, you just want to iron this down. Just be careful. It's okay if you go over it a little bit. But yeah, just like that. Here we go. What I like to do is I'd just like to start here and just push over a tiny bit. It's a good way to do it. Nothing too crazy. This is really going to last. It's going to look really nice. This gives you the tools to think about the details because this is the mindset I want to get you into. I'd really like you to think about what can you add outside of the obvious to make a pant nicer, and doing this Hong Kong seam finish is outside of the obvious. It's a really, really just nice way to do an old-school great finish on a pant. I recommend it, and it's something that if anyone did care about fashion that you met and sew, they would see that you've got the chops, that you've got a good set of skills to actually make something nice. Now what we're going to be doing is we're going to be covering this stitch right here. We're going to do something called stitching in the ditch. On this side of the fabric where we had showed that initial line, we're going to be sewing between the body of the fabric and this bias tape in that little line of space here and that's what we call stitching in the ditch. Between these two pieces is the ditch. You're going to sew in there. That way that stitch line you're about to do, it's not going to show up on the side of the pant that you will see. On the side of the seam allowance that we're going to see on the inside of the crotch, it's only going to pop up back here to catch this other side of the bias tape here. Now what we're doing, fold this bias tape over, and cover that, and hit it with the iron to create a space that you're comfortable sewing on. Same thing all the way around per usual. Look for the stitch, take your bias tape, and do your best to cover that stitch. That way when you stitch in the ditch, you're going to catch this side of the fabric on it. Now what you're going to do, now that you've ironed that down and set it in place, we're going to start pinning like crazy all the way around here to hold it down and hold it in place. Make sure you try and keep your threads that are fraying clean, trim them away so they don't get caught. Cool. Now you've gone ahead and you've pinned all the way around the crotch. Get your sewing machine now, and we're going to finish this off. What you're doing now is you're going to be sewing in this space, not on the new side that you just pinned, not on the side that's free hanging, on the side that you've already attached the body of the fabric to the bias tape. You're going to be sewing in this space right here between the blue and this base right here. You're sewing between on that little space of a line to try and catch the blue bias tape that's on the other side in the back to hold it all in place. Once it's done, you'll see what I'm talking about if you don't understand here. Okay, we're at the end, backtrack, pull your needle up, pull this thing out of here, sniff the thread, now check it out. On this side here, look at that. The entirety of the stitch it's not here and it's not on this blue right here. It's between them in that ditch space right there, and look at the other side. What you've done is you've caught the other side of this blue tape in that stitch with the white thread that you just stitched in the ditch width. That is a Hong Kong pant seam finished. 14. Finish Crotch Seam: Now that we're done with the Hong Kong seam finish, and you've learned how to do an outseam and inseam by doing the flat field seam and doing another French seam, we're going to go ahead and connect the crotch pieces up to a certain point. I'm going to tell you where to stop by referencing your pattern and then that way the pant's going to be ready to move on to where we put in the zipper and the fly. To make our lives easier, what we're doing is, go get your front pattern piece, get the pant you've just sewn, flip it to the front side. What you're going to do is you're going to take this and we're going to match it up. This way, you can mark in your notches. The thing is, we initially notch this and we did it while that crotch seam was wrong, before we put this Hong Kong bias tape in. The only thing is that when you do it all the way, you do cover up the notches that you just created. Go ahead, snip them back in again, the bottom one is where you're going to be sewing along the crotch seam up to you. You will stop at this point. You don't go all the way, you need this space to put the zipper and the flying. You stop at this point right here. Go ahead and put a little notch. Don't cut all the way in, just do a nice little eighth of an inch snip just so you can see where you're going. You're done with your pattern, go ahead and toss that aside. Get your other pant piece. Just start them at the top. Always match at the top right here. Follow the crotch seam down with them layered next to each other. Find the notch that you just marked and copy it onto this other side right there, just a tiny little snip. Now that that's done, we're going to sew these crotches together. Here's what you're going to do, make sure one pant leg that you've just sewn is right-side out, the way you would have it on your body showing, and then make sure the other pant leg right here is inside out. Now what you're going to do is you're going to take this pant leg over here and you're going to slide it into the pant leg that's inside out until the crotches meet. So you're literally just sticking one inside the other. Once you've done that, make sure the crotches are meeting up. Check it out. This is the inside of this pant and this is the inside of this pant and now what you're going to do is pin them together and then sew along the crotch. Go ahead and match up the center seam right there, go ahead to the front, find those notches on the bias tape that you just snipped, match those up as well. Once again, just so you know, that's going to be your stopping point. Here is your stopping point along the front, this is the space you need for your zip around the fly. Now go ahead and pin along this entire section to keep it together, to keep it nice and flat. Go ahead to the top over here, clean off any excess fabric that you left behind. Go ahead and pin at the top of the center-back along the crotch, holding that together. Now pin all the way down, matching everything up. The pants really starting to come together now. This is an exciting point when you're making something. Once we saw this crotch you'll be able to look at this pant and see the legs put together. It's where you feel like you're really starting to accomplish actually making something you're going to wear. Take it, pop it on the sewing machine, and now, for the first time in a while, you're going to be selling at a half-inch sew allowance, which is the normal seam allowance. We're not doing any other finish because this Hong Kong bound seam finish cleans up those raw edges immediately. From the edge of this blue tape, a half-inch in. We're not going all the way up to the seam, you marked where we're supposed to stop with those notches, you're going to sew right up to that point and you're going to backtrack there. Get right up to it, backtrack, come back towards the end of the seam with a couple of stitches. Don't be afraid to make that spot very sturdy. Pull the pin out, snip the thread. This is an exciting moment. We're about to move on to the zipper. But first, let me show you what we've done. Right now, this paint is inside out. When we were talking about the Hong Kong bounce seam finish, this is what I mean by the right side is showing. Check this out. Open this up, and we're going to iron this down and pretty much what we're doing is we're hiding the side that has that thread showing. What you're only going to see once you iron this down when you look in the pant, is the top of this seam with the clean stitch in the ditch that we've done. Check it out. That's what we do. That's how that works. That's how you make it look nice and clean on the inside of the crotch. Now, go ahead, grab your ironing mat, if you have an ironing board, it's easy to slide this over the end of the ironing board because I don't have that today because I'm showing you all with a mat, I'm going to use my arm ironing board, my mini one. Get your iron. However you can, the point is just to now iron this crotch seam flat. This is probably how you're more accustomed to seeing a seam done. Here we go. Look at that. It's an awkward space, ironing along the crotch seam because it's curved and it's going to have all this bunching, but just do your best because iron things out in the future if there's any creases or lines you don't really like looking at. Here we go. Look at that. Now, the other side. There we go. Put your iron away. Now what you've done, that's the Hong Kong seam finish. Just for fancies, if you want to give yourself some validation for all this hard work you've done so far, pull the legs out, right-side out, look at that, you've got two pant legs that are now put together, all they're missing is a zip or a fly and a waist band, and then some details like we're going to do the hook and eye at the end, we're going to have the pants. Look at that. Thanks for sticking it out with me so far, now, what we're going to do is we're going to move on to the next lesson where we're going to put the zipper in and the fly. 15. Start Constructing the Fly: [MUSIC] Welcome to the next lesson. Now we're putting the zipper in. This is one of the more involved parts, but we're going to make it pretty simple, laid it out for you. First things first, take the pen, move it to the side, get your ironing board or matte. Now what you're going to do is you're going to get your fly facing. This is a fly facing right here, and this is the interfacing that we got for that fly facing. What we're going to do now is we're going to iron this interfacing to the fly facing. What you need to be mindful of, is I'm doing a men's pants. If you're doing a woman's pant, everything is flipped. That means this fly facing right here would be for the other side of the pant, which means it would be like this and you should have cut the pattern for the interfacing like this so you can iron it onto this side. But since it's a men's pant pattern, it's going to be like this. I'm going to be ironing it right here just so you can see what's going on. Right here is the fly. For a men's closure, you're going to be attaching the fly facing to the left side. For women's, you'd be attaching the fly facing to the right side. Now, bust out your iron and lay this interfacing on the back of this. Try and fit it in as best you can, and then take your iron, pop it on top. Let that glue set. You're just adding a little bit of sturdiness to this fly facing so that way when you slow it down, it's going to be really sturdy in that fly area. It's going to be very nice. Now that that's attached, check it out. This is the self fabric, the main fabric, that's the interfacing we just attached, now glued to it. It's attached fully stable. Go ahead and get your zipper guard. That's this piece right here, and get your zipper guard interfacing that we also cut right here. Pop it on top, same exact thing. You're just going to iron this down, let that glue set. Sometimes the interfacing can be a little bit wobbly and be a little bit moving, especially because the iron is so hot, sometimes the heat attaches itself to a fabric and moves it around. Don't be afraid to just place it, not rub it around, just put it on top, let the heat set and then pull it off. There we go. Sometimes I just like to give it a nice low iron on the other side. Make sure everything is ship shape. Now you've got that done. Here's what we're going to do right now. You're going to take this fly facing now, and you're going to draw a half inch line all the way around here. We're going to be doing what we did with that pocket cover, where we sniffed around to create a clean curve and a nice on raw edge. There we go. Look at that. Take your scissors and only along the curve, not along the straight parts, you're snipping up to that line. Don't go past it, just go right up to it. There we go. Get that ironing board again. Just start folding it along this line that you just drew. Now you're going to iron it on to create a clean edge just like you did with that pocket cover. [MUSIC] Flip it over, take a look. Now you've got a clean edge. Move this aside. Now you've got your zipper here. What we're going to be doing now is we're going to be marking where we need this zipper to be on this fly facing. Essentially the point of this fly facing right here is to attach our zipper to it and then attach this fly facing to the crotch area so that way the stitch that you're going to put it on the zipper isn't going to show. If you don't understand what I'm saying, you're going to see once we do it. But this helps hide this zipper behind that crotch area so that way it's not showing. What we're going to do right now is three-quarters of an inch from this edge. I'm only saying three-quarters of an inch because I'm keeping in mind that our seam allowance on this edge right here, is a half-inch. It's a half-inch plus a quarter inch is where you're going to align the teeth of the zipper up. Here we go, three-quarters of an inch from this edge over here. Draw yourself a long low line. Now what you're going to do, is you're going to find out where you need your zipper to be. Go to your pant, go to the left side. We're doing a men's closure. For women's closure, go to the right side. Everything is the same. You're just completely mirroring it. You're going to take this part. You just did. You're going to take your fly facing and I'm going to match up your fly facing along this edge. You're matching the fly facing along the top right here. Placing it down, matching it there and you're going to follow it down all the way to where this fly facing ends. It ends right here at the bottom. I'm going to take your zipper and this is middle part on every zipper, the stopper at the bottom of the zipper, as you can see right here, this is the middle part right there. You want that starting a quarter of an inch above where this fly facing ends. Take it. This right here is a quarter of an inch. Let's just go ahead and mark it. You want this to be a quarter of an inch above the end. That's where you want this metal piece to stop. What you're going to do now is you're going to go ahead and you're going to follow this all the way up to the top to see where the zipper intersects with the top of the pant. What you're going to do is you're going to take your scissors and you're going to snip a little notch right here just to mark where that zipper needs to end at the top. Here we go, See. Now you have a marker for where that's going to end. Do the same thing on the other side of the zipper. To me marketing completely where this super needs to stop at the top to make sure everything is matched and lined up so that way you don't get a weird wonky zipper. All set. You're going to line up the teeth. Starting at a quarter of an inch above from the bottom, like I mentioned before. Mark the line if you need to right there. Now that we've notched and marked where we want the zipper to start and end, and we've drawn this three-quarter inch line on the fly facing, you're going to take the zipper stopper right here, that little metal piece that stops the zipper from slipping off, and you're going to place it right at that point, right at that quarter-inch mark. Take it down there. Stop it right there. Open up your zipper, and what you're going to do now is you're going to line up the zipper teeth right along this line that you just drew, and you're going to start pinning. There we go. Now what we're going to do is we're going to get our sewing machine, and we're going to bust out the zipper foot. Depending on what machine you have, they all have different zipper foots. If you're using an industrial machine, I'm sure some home sewing machines require different zipper foots. But for the model I'm using, which is a brother CS6000I. This is the zipper foot right here. That's what you need. Get your sewing machine, pop it on. Do your best to get the zipper out of the way because you don't want it to get too bulky and get caught. Here we go. Now this thing is placed down. The reason we use the zipper foot is because it allows you to get as close to the teeth as you need to without getting too close or being too far away. If you were to just use a normal sewing foot, you wouldn't be able to get close enough to the teeth in a way that it was just so far away that it would be very flimsy and your zipper wouldn't lay flat like you want it to. The zipper foot allows you to avoid that. The thing you need to know about this zipper foot is it needs to be pressed right up against the teeth, there's a little groove and a hole in it that allows you to put the needle in between the teeth and the actual foot. It's on every zipper foot, you'll see it line it up with the teeth. [MUSIC] Back tack at the end. Pull your needle up, cut away that excess thread. Here. Take a look. We just saw the zipper to the facing. Pop this open right here, along, right there, along that line. Because now what we're going to do is we're going to attach this part right here to the actual pant. Get your pants. Here's your crotch. Like we mentioned, we're sewing it to the left side. What you're about to do now is you're going to be sewing this side of the zipper. This way once you flip it now you can see that this zipper here is going to be facing towards the center front. Look at this. This is what we're aiming for right now. This is the left side of the crotch. Leftover, right for men. Open it up. There's the teeth right there facing towards the center front because you want the other teeth on the other side to face towards the center front so that way they can meet and zip up. Take this piece, match it up at the top, get your pins out. Go ahead and start painting down. In case you're wondering why I'm leaving this edge of this rod is because when you flip it and turn it, it's going to get tucked, which we know the seams and you're not going to see it. We've got this pin together. This is the fly facing right. You're sewing the raw edge of the fly facing to the center front crotch thing. Now go back to the machine. Take your zipper foot off, put your normal foot back on. [NOISE] Take the piece you just pinned, and now we're going to saw all the way down. We're sewing the fly facing right here to the pimp body. There's bias tape here. But if you're going at a half-inch, you're not going to be hitting this bias tape, half inche is beyond the space. This is about a quarter of an inch. We're going to be going beyond it. Sewing this piece, to this piece, not on the blue tape. Just make sure you're pulling the zipper away because the zipper is between these two pieces, you do not want it to accidentally get caught between indices. Make sure you're constantly checking it and pulling it out so that way it does not get caught half-inch. All the way down to the end of the fly facing [MUSIC]. You needle up. Snip away the thread. Move this out of the way. Now grab your pants. Go to the crotch area. Like I said, we're working with the men's pants, so we're going to be putting this fly facing on the left side. If you're doing a women's closure, [MUSIC] everything would be flipped and you're working on the right side with disputes. 16. Finish Constructing the Fly: As you can see the zipper is now attached to fly facing. Move this out of the way. Now go ahead and pin this raw side right here, right here that I'm pointing to, to the left side of the crotch. Have them meet at the top, right here, and then pin down along this edge keeping the zipper out of this scene. You do not want the zipper to get caught in the scene. You're just going to have to push it aside with your hands. The fly facing is now pinned to the left side of the crotch as you can see right here. Now what we're going to do is we're going to get the machine. We're going to take the zipper foot off, put the normal foot back on. We're going to sow along this to the end of the fly facing at a half an inch seam allowance. Replace the foot. Back tack at the end. Lift your foot. Pull it off. We have attached our fly facing to our pant body. What we're going to be doing in a few steps is we're going to be placing this under here. We're going to sow a J stitch, which will attach the facing to this pant body, and hold the zipper down without showing a stitch of this zipper on the pant. If we hit sown this zipper directly to this side of the pant, you'd see an ugly little stitch that you're not going to really love. What the fly facing does is it allows you to hide it behind, keeping this area relatively clean except for the J stitch we're going to do. But in my opinion, a J stich is a lot nicer than just a random stitch right in the middle. Now, go ahead and get your fly guard. The one that we ironed the interfacing onto. What you're going to do is you're going to fold it in half with the interfacing side that we ironed on showing out because we're going to flip it inside out after. Now you're going to take this, and you're going to sow at a half an inch right along the bottom, only the bottom. Put it on your sewing machine. Along that seam at a half an inch. This is it, with the iron our interfacing side showing. At this half-inch seam you just created, you're going to cut to a point. You're not going to cut into the stitch just to the right of it to a nice point. That way when we flip it like we've talked about before, it will be a lot crisper and easier, and cleaner to create and turn this point out. Take a semi-sharp object for the dull point and push that corner out. There we go. Get your ironing mat again. Go ahead and just iron this thing down. You've created a fly guard, get your pant back. Luckily, what we've done when we marked the notches on the zipper to show where the zipper needs to stop and where it meets the waistband seem or the top of the pant body. We now know on the other side with a notch where it stops as well. That's to make sure that the teeth are lined up on both sides so that we know that the zipper is sown correctly on both sides so it can match up cleanly. Take this fly guard. Now what we're going to do is we're going to sandwich pin and sow. You're going to be sewing the zipper between the fly guard and between the right side of the pant crotch. Go ahead, unzip the zipper. Take your ruler. We're going to draw a little line here, that's to help you match all of these things up because there's going to be three different seams that's going to make your life a lot easier to be able to visualize where everything needs to go, same thing. Get your fly guard. Also, mark a half-inch in, that's just to line everything up, flip the zipper over. Like before you want the teeth facing the body. Find your notch that we cut at the top of the zipper initially, match it up to the top of the fabric. That's where it's going to stop. What you want to do is you want to get the zipper teeth. These zipper teeth right here on the right side of this line, right to the right of it, not on it. To the right of its slightly because that's the line we're going to sow on. You don't want your teeth to get caught on this half-inch sewing line. The zipper is about half of an inch wide. You want the halfway point to be lined up along this black line right here. Constantly, if you need to, make sure you're looking under to check that it's actually meaning where it needs to go. With this section it's the zipper, it's important. Just make sure you take your time. Go ahead, keep it flat. Pin all the way down. Take the fly guard. You're going to match up the fly guard right here. You're going to start pinning it and sandwiching that zipper between the fly guard and the body of the pant. Now, what we've done is a sandwich pant. This is the body of the fabric. The zipper is in-between. Then we've got the fly guard on this side. This is what that's going to look like. Here's the fly guard at the back. That's what protects your underwear or whatever from getting caught in the actual zipper. That's the zipper right here. This is the body of the fabric. When the other side is done to fold over it, you can actually close this zipper up, and it's going to fall just like that, hiding the zipper away. Right now what we just need to do, sow these three layers together, put the J stitching, and then we're good to go. Flip it inside out again. Get your sewing machine. Put your zipper foot back on. Right now, the zipper is falling right at the half-inch mark. The zipper is right in here between the actual guard and the actual pant body. There's the teeth. You don't want to hit the teeth with the actual needle. You don't want to catch the teeth with the needle. What you're trying to do is so right to the right of the teeth. What you want to do is use your hands as eyes, and you want to feel around for where those teeth are. For me, I can feel where they are. Once you feel like you've found them, you put your needle in, place your zipper foot. Start with a back tack and slowly start to sow down to the right of those teeth to lock everything together. What I like to do when I get to the bottom half of the zipper while I'm sewing this section, I like to lift the foot and I actually like to pull the zipper away back up. We have the zipper currently unzipped. I like to zip it back up. Pop your needle up, pull it away. We're almost there. What we've got is a fly. The fly guard is good to go. Check it out, open this up, look at the teeth right there. We're going to give this thing a little iron just to keep the fabric crisp down. Then we're going to go to this side, and we're going to put the J stitching, and then the fly is complete. On the side with the fly guard, sometimes it's a plastic zipper you don't want to melt it. So just be a little bit careful. Take your iron and just smooth that section down because there's a nice little turn right there. Fly guard section done. Then now what you want to do, open up this piece. Now you want to just flatten that section as well. Just to the left of the teeth that seam right there, make sure you flatten that down because it's going to make it a whole lot easier for you to turn that section when you go to turn. You get that now, that's done. I'm going to take it, fold it under like that. Create a much crisper line, here we go, and now iron that crease at the end. That seam there we go. Check that out. Very clean right here. Now what we've got to do, is we have to do the fly facing. We're going to sow a J stitch. But a J stitch is you're taking this fly facing right on the left side of the fabric. The first thing that we put on, what you're going to do now is you're going to pin it down onto the back of this. We're going to sow a J into this pant, to hold that fly facing down and finish the zipper. Flip your pant inside out, make your life a little easier. Now take your pants, make sure it's staying flat. You are painting on top of layers of fabric. Just make sure you're not catching the back of the paint in here. You're going to pin this in right there. Then you just going to bring it up. That way you don't catch everything other than what you need to. Make sure everything stays flat. Keep working it with your hands to make sure it's exactly flat like you need it to be, you don't want things to be caught. You don't want it to be all bubbly. You just want to lay nice. Just to clarify, this is on the inside of the pant. We're not working on the outside. We're working on the inside as you can see the pocket interiors and the zipper on the inside. If at this point you feel like your curve that you created is just coming on down a little bit just because we put it there a little while ago, and we've been fidgeting around with this pant a lot, just give it a little steam, threw an iron on it. That'll help you lay it flat. Now let's pin down. Now what we're going to do, we are going to go ahead and get your sewing machine. Take your zipper foot off, put your normal foot back on. Okay, flip your pant, right-side out. The width of this J stitch pattern piece in the back, the fly facing is an inch and a half. You're going to start up here. Sow down along this curve, right across, maybe like an eighth of an inch across the body right here. You're going to backtrack along this point to make it firm and strong. For this point, same thing, you're going to have to use your hands as eyes, feel out where this ends. You know it's an inch and a half. But just feel it out to make sure everything's okay. Sow in an eighth to a quarter of an inch from that edge to catch that fly facing in the back. Here we go. Place it down. Feel out where the edge of that pattern pieces behind it, where the edge of that fly facing is. I'm going to go for an eighth of an inch. Place the needle down, back tack. Keep feeling out where that pattern piece is under the body of the fabric. Follow it down. Make sure you keep taking your fly guard, on the other side. Make sure that's not popping under where you're sewing. You want to make sure you push that away. You don't want everything to get caught together in the sewing. For this corner, take your time. Really, you're not in a rush. Use your fingers to feel out where it is. At this corner, you're not really able to use that inch-and-a-half dimension that you've been using to go down the line. Now you've just got to feel it out and know where you're going. Since it's a thicker piece, you can really feel it under there. Take your time, go slow. For this section too, if you feel like you need to draw a line on top of the fabric to show you where to go. Nothing wrong with that. We just finished the fly. It's a big deal. Take a look at what you've done. We just finished the J stitch. Looks really nice. Take a look at opening that zipper up. Look at that fly guard you just did, look how clean that little fly-facing edges because you folded it over, zip it back close, make sure it works. I'm sweating a little bit. I'm always nervous when I do that part. If you were able to get through it, It's a big deal if you feel like you already know ruffling a little bit in certain spots, don't be afraid to take your time and really, really tiptoe through it. But congrats, you guys got through the zipper. Now we're going to go ahead and attach the waist span to the pant body. I'll see you in the next lesson. 17. Attach Waistband: [MUSIC] We're really close. Be excited. You're almost going to be able to wear your first pair of pants. But first things first, what we're going to do is we're going to pin the waist band to the pant body. Here's how we're going to do that. Open up your zipper, go to the side that has your waist band extension. Now, I can finally show you what the extension is for and why we've had it this whole time. This piece right here, the fly guard, is an extension from the center front. This line right here is the original actual center front of the pant. This is an extension. We had to add this distance right here from the center front to the end of this fly guard to the waist pant so that way you can reach all the way around. Find that extension notch that we've had this whole time, split it up, and I'll go to the side that has the interfacing on it because that's the side that's going to be showing. That's the front side. That's the side that's got the belt loops on it. Take that, find the notch for the extension, go ahead and pin it right to that point where the zipper is and where the fly guard starts. Go ahead and pin that. There we go. It's a little tougher. It's a lot of layers. Now go to the end, right here. Go ahead and pin this end part down. You can pin the seam allowance here. The seam allowance that's right there. Go ahead, pin it down to the pant body. Now, we have many notches in different places but just because this pocket right here isn't fully attached yet, go ahead graciously throw a little pin in there just to make sure it stays put. This is just to make your life a little bit easier. You don't have to do it. If you don't want to I would though. Now follow around and look for your side seam notch. There you go. Luckily, we have belt loops at the side seams. Look for your belt loop, look under it and you're going to find your notch right there. Match that up to your side seam. This is your side seam where we did the flat field. Go ahead and match it up to the seam part of that flat field. Cool. That's done. Now go back into the space between and start matching everything up. Also just so you know, you're not pinning down the bottom of the belt loops. The belt loops you're going to keep out out of the way and we're going to sew those down to the body the pant once the waist band is fully attached. For now you're just attaching the waist band, no belt loops to the pant body. [MUSIC] Flip your pan around, look for your center back notch. Right there. Your center back. Find your center back seam. There's something called ease that we spoke about earlier. It's a little bit of extra space that allows you to have a little bit of give. Right here on the back, there's a little bit more, there's just a smidge more space and distance on the actual waist band compared to the back pant. What you're going to do is when you're spacing everything out, just give it a little bit of a pull. Not a heavy pull. It's not a lot of space, but just a tiny bit of a pull to continue relaxing everything in and spacing it out nicely. Generally on most pants, when they have ease, it's just around of a quarter-inch extra ease. [MUSIC] Now, we're just printing to the center front. Go all the way to your center front with a fly facing is. Go ahead and pin that inner seam allowance down to the actual pant body on the inside of the waist band. Right there. This is right at the front. Now, just pin the rest of the space between the side seam and the center front. Now once this is all pinned, you're going to take it to your machine and you're going to sew at a half of an inch all the way around. Start with the backtack and with the backpack. It's all pinned. Pull your machine over, you get ready to start sewing around. It's a little bit weird because obviously you're starting at something that's already sewn together. It's not laying flat. You really have to get in there with your hands to open up the space. As you can see, I'm really pulling it open right here. But once you do get it onto your presser foot, set that half inch line up for yourself. Put your needle in. [NOISE] Start with the backtack. Now start sewing all the way around at a half inch. Just make sure everything is laying flat. Your pockets. Primarily just your pockets. Make sure your pockets are laying flat. Make sure everything is matching up nicely. [MUSIC] You just sewed around. Now it's attached. Now what we're going to do, we're going to get your ironing board. Now what you're going to do, is you're going to iron down the seam that you just created. You're going to iron your seam allowance up, not down, up into the wastebasket. What we're aiming to do right now is we're going to do another stitch in the ditch where we take this piece right here, this is the waist band, fold this upper half an inch, and within this half inch of space, you're going to cover the stitch, just like we did when we stitch in the ditch last time. You're going to cover it with this and we're going to stitch in the ditch in the front. It's going to catch this down and the waist band is going to be created. This is a place we're having one of these would be really nice. It allows you to work on a curve because this shape is a natural curve. It's not actually flat and straight. Having this just allows you to make it just a little bit cleaner and make your life a little bit easier. Now that you've gone and ironed all the way around on that seam pushing the seam allowance right here, up into the waist band, now's the next step. The final step to finish out this waist band before we put these belt loops on where we're just selling the bottom of the belt loops because we've done the top already. What you're doing is you've got this excess. You have a half inch seam allowance at the bottom of this inner waist band right here, folded up a half inch, check where that seam line is right there, check where that stitches and then use this back part right here to fold over it and place on top of it. What we're going to do is we're going to stitch in the ditch, in the front in that scene and we're going to catch this excess right here. Get your pins and just start painting down around it. Do what I'm doing right now all the way around. Then we're going to take it to the sewing machine and stitch in the ditch. Like I said, you've got a half inch of space to work with there. Obviously, the goal is to make it as tight and nice as possible but like I said, for comfort sake, like with the Hong Kong bounds seam finished that we did when we use that bias tape. If you want to pull it just a little bit over more, it's okay. You can do that. It's a good way to start. [MUSIC] Now we have the whole inside pinned. Take a look. Look at all those pins. There's, I don't know, maybe 30 pins in here. Don't be afraid to pin a lot. Helps keeps things down. Now what we're going to do is we're heading to the other side, going back to the front, and we're going to do what we did before. We're going to stitch in the ditch. That means the entire way around this waist band, we're going to stitch in this seam right here. We're not stitching on the waist band. We're not stitching all the pant body. We're going in between in this section right here, all the way around. As you can see right here, between them, right in that line. Make sure you got everything laying flat on the inside, the pockets, all the little pieces, all the layers. Make sure you just spread these apart. Have your hand on the pant body, have your other hand on the waist band while you do this and pull them apart just so you can show yourself that seam that little ditch that we're sewing in. It helps you spread it up and see that space a little bit more easily. [NOISE] Just to keep everything in place, I like to keep the pins in. The tough thing about stitching in the ditch is you don't really have a visual of the other side while you're doing it, which makes things a little bit more difficult, it's just a better move because this way it's going to be way more precise. [MUSIC] We're at the end. Backtack. Pull your needle up. Cut the thread off. Move this out of the way so you can see what's going on and look at that. Stitch in the ditch. Everything here is down. The waist band is completely closed off. You can zip this thing up. You've got a proper fly. The only thing we have to do right now really quickly is so down the bottoms of the belt loops. Get your sewing machine again. The belt loops are already placed. The only thing you have to know is that they end a half inch below the waistband seam. Here's a little overhead. It's going to be the same for all of them. I'm going to show you one of them, show you how to sew it down and then feel free to go do the rest by yourself. Then I'm going to do the rest on my end. Here, take a look. Right here is half an inch below this wasteband seam. There's the seam. Here's half an inch below. Now so, just like we did at the top, at an eighth of an inch from the bottom. All you have to do is keep all of these things straight. Put it in [NOISE]. Pull it up, Check it out. Look at that. Now we've sewn down that belt loop. You're going to repeat that six times on every other belt loop. Now that that's done, we're going to meet up in the next lesson and then we're going to get the finishing steps done. That includes the hook and I were going to hand the pants [MUSIC] because that's something you're going to need for any pair of pants. Then we're going to be able to move on and start feeding this pant. [MUSIC] 18. Finish Your Pants: We've made it very far. If you made it here, good job, because this is hardcore. You're making a whole pant and it's a big undertaking and you should feel very accomplished because it's one of the most satisfying things you'll ever do. Congrats. In Japanese, we go which is like clap, clap. Good job. Now what we've got to do is we've got to put our hook and eyes on. Here's how we're going to start. Unzip your pant, open it up on the fly facing side. For the men's that's the left, for the women's that's the right. Take a ruler, place it at the end of the waist band right here, and mark a half of an inch. Mark up here. That's a half of an inch and mark the halfway point as well. This is roughly about an inch and three-quarters in height. Mark the halfway point of that. Here we go. Look at that, that's the middle. Right now you're taking your hook. This is your hook right here, and you're placing your hook right at the middle of that middle point along that half inch right there. That's the goal, this is where we want this to be. Get your needles out. Especially for something like this, try and use the smaller needles that you have, it's going to make it a lot easier to move your hands around the holes and sow by hand. Get your thread, get a decent amount. Usually sometimes they say there's a certain distance of thread that you should use. I just like to keep it a nice low, medium length like this. This is about 18 inches. Almost 18 inches right here. Take a look at that. Here's how I like to tie the ends off of things. Take your thread right here. Fold it just in half, not all the way in half, just along this edge right here, because I want them not to be thick. Take this and you're going to do and knot with just this end that's doubled up. Take this and then pull this closed. Then what you're going to do, you've got this excess beyond the knot you just created, just trim it away. Just like that. Now you've got your little knot at the end of this thing. Even trim a little bit more, clean it up a little bit more. Why not? That's all set. Bring this back. Get your needle. Put your thread through the eye of the needle. Cool. Now that's done. What we're doing right now is we're going to be sewing these holes down. You're just going to be doing these two at one time. You're not going to be connecting this thread to this hole and the hole under my finger right here, which matches this one. You're just doing these two to start. You have got to keep your fingers firmly on this because this thing is not sturdy yet, but once you get these two holes done, it should be sturdy. We're going to go methodically from the front to the back. We're going to be starting right here. You're piercing right under this hole, piercing the fabric right under that hole, and you're going to be pushing up through the hole. Pull it. There we go. We're going to continue this moving slowly forward towards the back on the side. Here we go. Continue doing it. You just want to make sure this is nice and sturdy. I've done about six loops right now. If you're like me, you can never do too many. Now it's held in place. See, now I can let go or at least loosen up my grip. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this right here. Through those knots that I just did, I'm going to push the needle through those little loops I did. Pull it through. Then in this loop that you have behind, I'm going to push my needle through and create a knot. It's just like you're tying a knot except with a needle and thread and it's going to tie off right there. Now I'm going to do that same process with the same thread tagged in right there and go to the next hole. I'm going to pierce this, pierce the fabric right below this hole, push it through. There we go. Pull it through, nice, and then keep going ahead and doing that. You're going to repeat that seven to eight more times, whatever makes you feel more comfortable. Sometimes I do more. I never do less because I just like to make sure it's really going to last in there. There we go. Keep on pulling through. Each time, just to clarify, you are piercing the fabric every single time, right below it. Try not to go too far from the hole because then you're going to have a stray-looking thread right there. It's going to pop out. It's going to have more chance of catching on things and breaking. Keep pulling through. That's enough. Now go ahead and you're going to do your final one, but here's what you're going to do. Push it through just like the other time. Now you have this O shape right here, this little O from the left behind fabric. You're going to pull this through here. You're going to tie it off. Here is the last thing that we're going to do. You're going to push back through all of those little threads, all those little loops. Push this through those loops you've just accomplished and you're going to wrap it around 1, 2, 3 times. Then you're going to get your finger where you just wrapped. You're going to tug it down. You're going to hold it firm. Put your finger on top of it a little bit loosely. You don't have to press down too hard. Now you're going to pull this needle, pull it through. You're just going to have to shimmy it just a little bit because it's a tight space is going through both the loops you've created and this knot you're about to create. Don't be afraid to tug, fit it through. Take your time. Hold your finger down. Once it's through, hold your finger down on that knot you just created with that's what's about to happen. Those three loops are going to create a knot, hold them down, slowly pull this thing through and check it out. You can probably barely see it. But what we did is we just tied off a little knot right at the end there. Now you can take your scissors. Snip off. Now that's tied off, tied down, and good to go. We're going to repeat that process here and here. Just to show you, none of those threads are showing on the other side, you're only sewing on this fabric piece right here. You're not pushing all the way through to the other side. The point of the hook and eye is to keep this clean. Now we're just going to move on to the eye, where I'm just going to show you how to place it but the sewing technique is exactly the same. Right now, close your zipper. Now that you've got your hook on here, close that zipper, place it here, open it up. Take a look at where the edge of that hook is. Right under here. As you can see in that space, it's peaking out. Draw yourself a little line. This is going to help you judge where to put that eye. Now that you've marked, open this backup. Place the eye right to the left of where you just placed that. That's where your eye goes. Now you're going to do the same exact sewing technique method to sew this down in that position. Now what we're going to do to finish up last but not least, having the pants. All you need to know about having the pants right now is that we have an inch and a half of seam allowance right here. Grab your ruler. What I want you to do is mark a half-inch up from the bottom right here, and then go up again and do it all the way around the pant and mark an inch. Because what we're going to do is we're going to fold up a half an inch first and then a full inch. Here we go. Cool. Just like that; half inch, inch. Get your ironing board, turn the pant inside out. Take it to the ironing board. Then here's that half-inch line. Go ahead and iron that down all the way around. Hit that half-inch line first. We're almost there. All that work, one hem away. We're going to fold it up an inch. The reason we're doing this, the reason we folded that half-inch up first is because that's going to hide the fraying and that seam allowance from fraying more and getting all messy. Then you fold it up an inch and then we're going to sew at the top of this line to close it off and keep it clean. But you're also allowing yourself to have an extra inch and a half of space right here to work with if you ever want to lengthen this pant. Cool. Now that that's done, here we go. It's the last one. This is it. Take that pant leg that you just ironed up. You're going to wrap it on here, put it on your sewing machine. Because this is an inch, you're going to sew just under an inch to close this thing off. The most important thing that you need to know is to start at the inseam because that backtack, you don't want to see it on the front of the pant. If someone looks down at your paint, that little part is going to be a little bit thicker and darker with thread than the rest of it. Make sure you do that starting seam on the inseam so that way it's not visible. Here we go. I'm at the inseam. I'm going to be sewing just over an eighth of an inch, just under a quarter of an inch, whatever you're comfortable with, you have a whole half inch of space to sew on, on that hem to catch it. Here we go. For the hem, you can control your stitch length. For a top stitch, like I said, we can do different stitch lengths. I'm going to make mine three. It doesn't need that much strength and so much tension to keep that hem up. If anyone ever goes back to fix this, the wider you make the stitch, the easier it is to unravel it to go ahead and fix it and make it longer or shorter. Ready? Needles in two stitches forward two stitches back. Now go ahead and go all the way around. Just like that. My friends, we are pretty much completed. One last little finishing touch I would love you to do you now have the skill of doing a Hong Kong bias theme finish anyway you want. What we're going to do here is we're just going to pink, that's what you call it pinking. Pink the end of the flyguard right there. You're not catching this. Do not get the bias tape. Fold away the zipper. You are just getting this fabric right here. The nice thing about pinking sews is it's a very easy way to lock off the end of this fabric so it doesn't fray anymore. Check it out, boom. Check it out, boom. Then hold up. That's pinked. Having all these little jagged edges here, it makes it so it won't continue to pull off and pull off little threads. You've separated all of these threads by using these little points. That's done now. Flip your pant back inside-out. Just like that, you just finished some pants. Take a look at this hem you just did. You caught the seam allowance below. Now you have an inch and a half to work with if you need to lengthen them. If you have to shorten them, obviously you take away. You've top stitch here, now you know how to hem pants. Now you know how to sew hook and eye. These pants are done. We're starting to get ready for the next lesson where we're actually going to put these pants on. You're going to see what fits, what doesn't work, where it feels a little bit too tight. Where do you think you could use some more space, and we're going to actually take that knowledge and we're going to apply it and learn how to actually go back to the pattern you've made, make all of those adjustments on the pattern so that way you own an actual pattern that is accustomed for pant for your body. That's the next step. See you then. 19. Fit and Adjust Your Pants: All right, everyone, we've made our pants. Now what we need to keep in mind is that these are not the final pairs of pants. These are based off of my measurements, how my body is shaped, but who knows the curve might not be the right curve. The hem might not be the right length. There's all things that you can change. Go try your pants on, see what works, see what feels off, see if the crotch is a little bit too high, maybe the waste is a little bit too tight. An easy solution is to start by moving up a size on the pattern and trying again. But if you're not having that problem, now what we can start doing to make things perfectly fit if it's shaping you nicely, if it's fitting mostly correctly. The mindset you need to have is you need to think about the side seam first. If this pant is too tight, that means you need more space along the sides. Along these sides right here, you can go ahead add an inch, add a half inch, add a quarter inch whatever you feel like you need. Remember that whatever you add to a pattern on one side, you usually need to do to the other side. If you want to add an inch of space to this side seam, that means you add a half-inch to the front and a half inch to the backside seam collectively that makes one inch. You can add that to the side seam, literally with a ruler parallel to that side seam line, draw an entire line all the way down, and that's going to be your new line. Just keep in mind, there's always seam allowance. You draw that half-inch line, make sure you add the seam allowance to it. Luckily for these patterns, the seam allowance is already included. If you're just going to be going based off these measurements and these patterns, literally all you would do that I normally do with the side seam, get scrap papers, put it on the side seam, get some tape, tape it down, get a ruler and a pencil. Go to where the original side seam is right here. That's your side seam with a seam allowance. Look at this. Sometimes it's good to be mindful of where the seam allowance was. That's the seam allowance. If you haven't figured it out yet, the seam allowance, this is all the space that you sewed and played with inside of the fabric. This is the actual line when you've sewn things together, this is where they stop. This right here on the side seam is the visual. This right here is this line right here. The seam allowance is that extra bit that's on the inside that we caught here with all those raw edges and whatnot. Keep in mind, you've got this seam allowance if you want to make this a half-inch bigger, because you need to be adding equidistant amount to the front and the back at 0.25 to the front. This is the front pattern piece right here. Go ahead, add 0.25, that's a quarter of an inch. Add that to the edge right there, and then you have to re-add your seam allowance in which is that extra bit you need to be able to catch the fabric and attach the fabric together. Here we go. Add that half inch of seam allowance right there. Nice. That will be your new side seam right there. Right here you just added 0.25 inches to the front and you're going to add 0.25 inches in the same exact way to the back. You just added a half inch of space to that side seam, making it bigger. If you want to make it smaller, you take away. In this example. Let's say this is your seam. This is the seam allowance. This is that half-inch space right here. Right now you want to take away a half inch from the side seam. Go ahead. Take away 0.25 here on this front piece. Make sure that you know that this is that new gap space of seam allowance that you need. What you're going to do. Cut this away. Complete this all the way down the side seam, all the way up and down. Do the same thing on the side seam for the back piece, you need to mirror everything. Because we have a waist band, you need to apply whatever you add or take away to the waist band as well. Let's say you're taking away a half and here. That means at the waist band. Here's the waist band. That means at the side seam for the waist band right here, the notches that signify the side seam for the waist band pattern pieces, you're going to go in here, draw straight line to make things easy for yourself. You're going to plan to take away a half of an inch total. Like I said, on the front, you took away a 0.25 inches and on the back, you took away 0.25 inches as well. This space is now a half-inch collectively. Now what you do is you can go ahead, fold on this line that you just created and close away that space. Gets some tape, tape it down. Now you just shrunk your waist band down and you just shrunk your side seam down to match both of those things. That is how you take space away on the side-seams or the out-seams. That's where I recommend you work on doing something like fitting the sides or taking out on the sides. I don't recommend you do it on the in-seam. It's a lot easier on the out-seam when you're trying to make these adjustments. For me, I tried these pants on recently and I felt like the crotch was it just a little bit too high. I didn't really love it. I was like, this should be a lot more comfortable. I prefer comfortable things, let's drop the crotch a little bit. Here's the crotch right here. Like I said, you're making the same adjustments on the back as well as on the front. You got to do the same thing to both sides. Take your ruler. Just for your own brain sake, mark that seam allowance in. Normally on patterns that you buy, they don't mark the seam allowance because they just assume that you're going to cut out what you need to. I like to go in and just do that just to see how much of a seam allowance you have. Use whatever scrap paper you have around. Tape it down. Here's what you're going to do. This point right here, I'm going to drop an inch. Take this ruler, make sure that this ruler right now is perpendicular to this middle line that you have here. Draw a line an inch below. See. That's going to be your new crotch line. To make things a lot easier for you right now, draw in your full seam allowance. You only need to go so far because there's only a certain point that you're actually making these adjustments at. You're not going too high up to actually change anything. All right. Look at that. This is all that excess sewing space. This is where the seams actually will land. Now that you have that and you just drop your point, you don't want to change the distance on this thing. Mark this parallel, mark that point. This is the point where the crotch seam ends. All you're doing is dropping this point down to here so you know where the distance actually is. You're going to take what I mentioned earlier, you're going to get your French curve out. That's the one that I said you needed. You're going to take the French curve and you're just going to do the best fit line that you can do. You're going to try and mirror this curve that you already have here, and you're going to drop it down and try and seamlessly true it, and when I say true, that means blend. You're seamlessly do your best to blend it into the seam allowance line that's already here, and you're literally just dropping it and matching these two points all the way down. What you've essentially done here is you've taken this spot and you've dropped it down to here. It's the same spot in terms of the vertical, it's the same vertical position. All that you've done is dropped this creating a much bigger use space for you to have more space in your pants essentially. Then what you're doing is you're taking this new point, like I said, it's very easy to draw your seam allowance and sometimes it helps you visualize things. All you're doing is you're taking this and you're drawing a new connection, you're doing your best to curve it into there, so you took this point right here to drop the crotch. You drop the crotch an inch, you created a new crotch curve right here to create more space. This is the excess space you just added to that zone now and now you just took this point and reconnected into the scene that you already have created. That is how you drop the crotch. Just to get you in a good habit, now that you've done that, go mark your seam allowance at your new seam allowance space, mark it here. Mark it all the way up, right there. Go ahead, take your scissors, chop. Cut away the space that you don't need anymore. What you just did, is you dropped the crotch, created a new pattern and now you have way more space in that crotch zone. Then the next thing we're going to do, let's say when you're standing in your pants, let's say it's too tight, in the butt area, in the crotch so let's say you don't have enough space in there as well. You've dropped it, but now you just want some more give essentially. You want some more slack in the pants. That means you got to take this crotch line right here and extend it outward because that's going to give you even more space in that zone. Same thing, all you're doing is you're taking this piece of paper, taping scrap paper or whatever you have on hand and now what you're doing is along this line you just created this new crotch line, you're extending it out. Let's say you want to extend it an inch, that's a good amount of space. There you go. Mark an inch from that point, from your original spot, you're shifting this over and now what you're doing is you're taking that French curve again, this one right here and you're doing the same thing again. You're just essentially creating a best fit line for the situation. You're doing your best to keep everything clean and blend it all together. Cool? There's the new line. Let me erase a little bit to make things a little bit visually easy for everybody. You get rid of this line below it because you just extended it out and now you got to take this line and do your best to reconnect it as well, so I need some more scrap paper. I'm going to tape it down here because I'm going to need to do the whole side seam. Now I'm going to use this and in this case pair it with my ruler. Like I said, if it makes your life easier, draw in that seam allowance, it's easier to help you visualize everything, and what you're gonna do is you're going to take this point, create a similar curve to the one you had prior, just shift it over. Sometimes I like to match it on the ruler and then just slide it over. Take your ruler if you don't have the long French curve, which I assume you might not if you don't want to pay for it, totally reasonable, and what you want do is you just want to blend it, start drawing this line and then use this ruler to blend it back into the leg. Here you go, boom. You essentially just created a new side seam. You move the crotch over it, you now have more crotch space. That's how you make that adjustment. The last adjustment that I imagined you'd want to make is hemming the pants. To do that, you go back into the pant, you unstitch, you have that excess seam allowance of an inch-and-a-half to work with and on the pattern, literally all you would have to do is get a piece of paper like we've been doing, go to the hem of the pant. Let's say you want to extend it. Let's say it's too short. You don't want to wear Caprice, I guess. This end line is where my pattern ends. That's my measurement. Let's say I want to extend it a half-inch. Boom, draw a half inch line below it, continue this here, continue this down as well, cut it out. Now you've just extended your pant pattern down, cut the rest of this out. Those are the adjustments you need to make. Think about your side seam, think about your crotch depth, think about your crotch width, and you think about your hem length. Those are the four things I always think about whenever I make a pattern and I put my pants on and I'm figuring out how I need to shape and adjust it. Always make sure, like I said, with the side seam, whenever you're changing your side seam in or out, those same measurement changes need to be added to the waist band, either taking away or adding at the side seam, center back or the other side seam. That's how you adjust your pants and create a good pattern. The most important thing to remember about what we're doing here today is we're trying to get you on a path where you can make a pair of pants that perfectly fit you, that you can constantly change to anyway that you want, to be custom to you, that you can wear forever and continue to make. What I'm going to do now, is I'm going to go start looking through some fabrics that I like. I've been really wanting to make black trousers for a long time and now with my adjusted pattern where I just adjusted the crotch depth, the crotch length, the side seam a little bit, the waist band and the hem, I'm going to go ahead and apply that to a new pattern, which is this and I'm going to go ahead and take that and make myself a pair of black trousers that I've been wanting for a long time. Now you've got the tools, I've given you all the tools you need to be able to make your own pants, to shape them the way you need to, go out into the world, look for some cool fabrics, look for something you've been wanting to make for a while or honestly just make yourself a staple. Maybe it's time to make yourself that pair of khakis, that pair of black trousers that you've always wanted to wear. I know for me, when I make these black trousers, I'm going to wear them a lot. That's the point. I want to make things that I know I'm going to wear all the time. I'm a creature of habit, so go out, pick out a fabric, and now it's time to move to the next step of actually making something for yourself. 20. Final Thoughts: You made it. I don't know how you feel, but, it's a lot you just learned a whole lot of things. These are the trousers that I just made. Black trousers. I gave it a nice little crease line in the front. All the details I taught you are on this pant, top stitching here. You stitch in the ditch around the waist band. You've got a zipper here. Look at that. It's got a nice little hook and I as well. Same thing I used white pocketing because I like the contrast of it. A lot of the same finishes. You essentially just learned in however much time this is, what I spent four years doing. Right now I hope you know that you're just at the beginning of a really great and fun journey. Don't put too much weight on yourself. Just really try and enjoy the process of getting better at these things because it really pays off once you start making things for yourself that you can wear every day in front of all your friends. Honestly for the holidays maybe make for people. That's one of the coolest things that I get to do as I get to actually make heartfelt presence that I put my time into for people. That's a really great thing that I'm happy that I get to experience. But now, what you can do is there's a project gallery here. I would love if you all could go ahead and take pictures of thing and take pictures of your process, take pictures of the finished pant on you, and upload it to the project gallery. That way we can all take a look at what we're working on. It really makes it a more fun community, which is what I hope to be doing here. I hope you really enjoyed this class and I hope you really continue to go on this journey. You continue to develop your skills. Be patient with yourself. Thank you so much for being here. Continue enjoying making clothes.