An unbalanced pants pattern can wreak havoc on the fit. Katrina from Katrina Kay Creations shows how to balance a plus size pants pattern. An unbalanced pattern will make pants that hand crooked or twist around your legs or have diagonal folds across them. A purchased pattern will already be balanced, but if you make any alterations to it, you’ll need to check to make sure it is balanced. Her video tutorial shows first what a balanced pattern looks like, then what an unbalanced pattern might look like. She also shows how to adjust the lines to bring it back into balance. Go to her blog to watch her video.
As I watched her video, I was reminded of one of my most ridiculous sewing fails. My mother had a pair of simple elastic waist pants that fit her perfectly and we wanted to copy them. We traced what we thought were accurate lines, but when she tried on the muslin, the pants legs were twisted! We laughed and laughed and laughed at the ridicolousness of pants legs that somehow wrapped all the way from the back to the front in just the space from knee down to the ankle. Now that I’ve watched Katrina’s video, I know that our traced pattern was not balanced. Rather than just wadding up our failed pattern and trying again, we could have adjusted the lines to make the first one work.
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