A few weeks ago I took my Dad to a medical appointment and needed to fill in a couple of hours. Which wasn’t hard, because there was a fabric store two doors down. I hoped to buy some fabric to replicate a top Paul liked and wore literally to pieces. The owner showed me some options and I settled on one then, since I had the time, I browsed fabric and patterns. They had lots of Style Arc, and I found a long-sleeved top pattern, a t-shirt pattern with lots of options, and a wide-legged pants pattern.

There’s fabric for the first two in the stash, but I needed something suitable for the pants and once again the owner’s knowledge was invaluable. I settled on a black linen with light brown pinstripes. It also turned out that she’d made samples of the pants in a couple of fabrics, so I got to see some pairs ‘in the flesh’ and confirm I liked the shape and design.

A few days later I traced the pattern, then over the following weekend I made a test pair with old bed sheet fabric. Trying it on, they fit great. There was just one small detail I wasn’t 100% happy with (the gathering around the waistband makes the pockets gape a bit) but I decided could live with that. So I cut the pieces from the linen. I ran out of weekend, so on the following one I sewed them up.

The pattern had more directions than the usual Style Arc pattern, but was pretty straightforward. The waistband was fussy – not hard to understand but seems needlessly fiddly to sew. The band is sewn together lengthways with the elastic inside then sewn to the waist of the pants, which means two rounds of stretching it out while you sew and makes you wish you had a third hand. It seems like an approach that someone who hates threading elastic might take and, while I can see both pros as well as cons in the method used, if I make these pants again I’ll try a different way.

And since I like the pants, there’s a good chance I will make another pair.