The Elroy Route

I am very good at making the simple way more complicated than it needs to be.  I excel at over thinking to the point that I will add 3 or 4 extra steps that weren't needed.  I am a pro at taking the long way around and finishing a task that could've been done in a shorter time period.

In our house we call it, The Elroy Route.  Elroy is my uncle, and has been known for taking very strange routes to get from point A to point B, often getting lost in the process and is to stubborn to ask for help.  I just took The Elroy Route in sewing.

I'm am working on this pair of pants.  It has a drawstring waistband that's incorporated into the pattern piece as extra fabric above the actual waistline and you just fold it over and sew it shut.  Those who sew will know what I'm talking about.

When I made my test pair it was very clear that I needed to drop the waistline because it was to high.  I'm not making old man pants.  Taking what I learned last year about dropping the waistline, I put a piece of elastic around my waist, adjusted the pants where I wanted them to sit, traced around the bottom of the elastic and proceed to cut a new waistline on the pattern.  I was smart enough to factor in the extra fabric for the casing, however because I had just changed the shape of the waistline now I have a strange shaped casing.

I puzzled over what to do next for a while, and finally pulled out the directions to see if I was missing something.  Boy was I, and if I had bothered to read the directions first I would've saved myself a lot of time and trouble.

See that line that says crotch depth adjustment line?  That's there for a reason.  It wasn't the waistline I need to adjust, it was the crotch depth.  All I had to do was slash the pattern along that line and drop the top part down about 2 inches.  This would've kept the waist casing intact and kept the pattern notches in the same place for the matching pieces like the pockets and pocket facing.

So now to fix this I need to go back and retrace the original pattern with the original waistline and drop the crotch depth.  See 3-4 extra steps that weren't needed.  It's a good thing we learn from our mistakes, because this is one I don't want to make again.