I spent the Easter bank holiday weekend tackling a heck of a project – some Trend Patterns TPC 12 Utility Trousers. It wasn’t easy but we survived and having road-tested these pants in the following weeks I feel they were worth the effort. I’m especially enjoying wearing them twinning as a black crayon with my cat, who wanted to join me for these photos yesterday.

I’m typically loath to spend £20 on a pattern but I couldn’t get Shauni’s gorgeous version out of my head and as an almost permanent member of the trouser-wearing brigade these days (seriously, never wear dresses any more) I’m always looking for ones with interesting design details to add my my collection.

I guess with Trend – one of the more high-fashion-forward indies out there – you are paying for the drafting and design rather than lovely hand-holding guidance (or indeed an inclusive size range – my hip measurement skims the largest size on the chart). I’d already been forewarned by Charlie, who has also just made an excellent pair, that the instructions were on the skimpy side, and got an extra sense from spending an entire evening cutting the many pieces out on a single layer that it wasn’t going to be a walk in the park kind of make. To that end I procrastinated on getting started – but when I did, while there were painful bits here and there, I did have finished trousers after two half-day sewing sessions.

Fit-wise things were quite straightforward. I cut a 14 based on my hip measurement and it was easy enough to bring in the waist at the centre back and side seams to fit my smaller measurement there. There’s a nice curvy waistband so no gaping and the length is great. The only thing I altered as I went was to lop two inches off the rise as I didn’t want that super-high/super-long-crotch look. I did this straight from the waistline but I’ll alter the pattern to take it off lower down (and maybe add back half an inch) for next time. I could possibly also size down generally but I do like how comfortable these are.

The rest of the pattern however…. there were certainly parts that were cool and interesting to sew – like the origami-folded vents and an unusual but smart and intuitive fly/waistband construction – I feel like some improvements would make all the difference to the overall usability and enjoyment of this pattern, such as:

– The order of some of the steps made things harder than they needed to be at times. For example, you are instructed to close the outseam before finishing the leg topstitching and vent construction. That makes it harder to manoeuvre under the machine to reach the vents as it’s a little leg-shaped tube. There’s no reason not to sew the side seams after the vents are in which would make access much easier.
– The pattern pieces aren’t numbered and many have really similar names, which makes it hard to know which one to pick up and use at each point. Or indeed to accidentally sew (+ trim + understitch) the ‘front facing’ onto the pants instead of the ‘front fly facing’ #askmehowiknow. Similarly, notches and marks which are referenced in the instructions like the vent stop point are not labelled on the pattern either.
– The instructions have photographs for some steps, but they’re on a cream garment with white stitching so you can’t really tell what’s going on. Sometimes what’s caught in the shot doesn’t really help either e.g. if the fly one was more zoomed out I might have seen I had the wrong piece but it was a fairly useless close-up of the bottom end.
– The written instructions are needlessly confusing and need a proofread. Why write ‘attach’ ‘mount’ ‘close’ etc when you just mean ‘sew’?
– Some finishing-off type steps are not covered so a bit of judicious gap-filling is needed. Like anchoring the end of the fly and the unsecured edges of the waistband facing.

And here are a few extra tips which if you make the pattern you might want to consider too:
– It’s generally not necessary to pre-overlock the raw edges as instructed. I did it as I went which I much prefer; much less tedious.
– I would recommend pressing in creases for the hem and vents while they’re still flat as you will lose your notches after overlocking the raw edges.
– I would certainly toile or wearable-toile to get the fit and construction down before cutting into good fabric. I used a fairly cheap cotton-linen from Abakhan and it got a bit battered from unpicking in places, though I am glad these are definitely wearable.

For all my gripes about the instructions, I did mostly enjoy this project and I really like the finished pants! They feel cool yet comfy and super wearable – they’re gone into regular rotation since Easter even though the cotton-linen I used creases like a mf so needs constant ironing. I especially love those leg vents, which I’ve tried to show in motion above. I think a white denim pair would be pretty cool and I’m sure it will all go easier the second time around.