The mysteries of pant fitting - I'm starting to get it

It's taken me about a year of trial and error, multiple muslins, and several drafts and re-drafts, but I finally have a pattern I'm happy with.  I came close last winter, I had a pattern that fit, but I wasn't completely happy with.  The biggest issue with that pattern was the double darts I had to put in the waist.  My ultimate goal is to make jeans, and since I can't find a jean pattern in my size that I like, I have to start from scratch.  I know how to turn a standard trouser pattern to a jean pattern, but I wasn't sure it could be done with the double dart pattern without completely messing it up.

This winter, I've been working with a couple different patterns, trying to narrow the waist, while still leaving room for my hips with not so great results.  Then I pulled out my Surefit kit again and decided to follow the drafting directions exactly, unlike last winter when I tried taking some of the ease out, and found out very quickly I need to add it back in and had to make so many other changes, that it wasn't the same pattern in the end.

The result from this newest re-draft?  Close, I liked the fit in the waist and didn't think the legs were to wide, but they still needed some work.  The problem, drag lines in the back and the hem pulling up on the inseam. 

 

I tried adding to the inseam, like I did last year.  Didn't work.  I tried taking a wedge out of the side seam, as directed to do in the Surefit instruction book.  Didn't make a difference.  I was at a loss as to what to do next, so I turned to my friends at Pattern Review. Right away it was suggested that they were hanging off grain.  But I had already double checked the pattern and the pants, and in both cases the grain line was straight.  So what was causing them to hang on my body off grain? 

 I needed more room in the hip.  More hip room meant a bigger waistline, so I was very reluctant to make this change because I thought I was going to end up with the dreaded double darts again.  But then it was explained to me that it wouldn't necessarily change the waist, because what I added to the hip, I'd take out of the center.  

What I needed to do was similar to a knock knee adjustment, but higher in the torso.  I needed to cut the pattern from side seam to center, shift the upper portion toward the side seam, redraw the grain line and true up the seams.  This maintained the original portions of the pattern, but added more room in the hip and subtracted from the center.  To figure out how much I needed to shift, I had my husband hold a yard stick straight up & down from my knee and measure how much the grain line on the pants veered off at the low hip.  He measured the front to be off by 1/2" and the back, well some where between 2 & 3 inches.  It was different on each leg.  This left me scratching my head.  I didn't think I could shift one leg more than the other, so I decided to start with an inch.

It didn't work, or at least I thought so.  What it actually ended up doing was throwing the grain off all the more.  It was suggested on Pattern Review that I lay this pattern over last winter's pattern with the gain lines matched and to see what's going wrong.

Right away it was almost apparent.  I still needed more room in the hip.  Using last winter's pattern I added a little extra to my current pattern.

This straightened out the back, but the front was still a little off and a little tight in the tummy. So I added the 1/2" to the center front that I took out when I shifted them.  It turned out to be a little to much.  The waist was a little to big and I had a little to much fabric in the tummy.  I started to remove from the center front in small increments. Just a 1/4" did the trick.

I'm beginning to realize that when I need to add or remove width from a pattern, it's the center seam I should be adjusting.  All this time I've been trying to take room out of the side seams, and throwing the hip lines off.  If I have time before I go back to work this spring, I'll revisit the Connie Crawford pattern I tried earlier and try adjusting the center and front princess seams to get a decent fit.