Many years ago I made four pairs of pull on “jeans” from some beautiful thick ponte that I had bought somewhere in my travels. In order to make them I hacked a pattern but couldn’t remember which pattern and what I’d done with my hacked pattern. It all happened pre-blogging so I couldn’t even use the blog as an aide memoire!
I had seen the Jalie Éléonore Pull-On Jeans pattern in my travels through the interwebs, and had mentally parked it as a possibility if I didn’t want to do all the hackery pokery again. In the end, I bought the pattern, cut and stuck and was good to go.
I have got some nice wool ponte in my stash from Knitwit so I wanted to use that, but thought I’d better test the pattern first. The pattern has 27 sizes, which makes for a slightly eye watering tracing experience, although I just noticed on the website that the pattern is layered. I rechecked my version and it definitely doesn’t allow me to isolate sizes, so not sure if that’s a glitch at my end or Jalie’s.
My first job was to find the size chart. It isn’t included in the instructions so I had to go off to Jalie’s website to find it. This is slightly annoying as I can be without internet access and would then be stuck. Anyway; my hip measurement fell between the R (91cm) and S (94cm) and as my hip measurement is 92cm I followed the instruction to go with the bigger size. I used a very stretchy ponte. The instructions call for a minimum of 20% stretch but I had around 50%. This did give me pause for thought about the sizing, but I pushed on with the S size, mostly because I didn’t want to retrace the pattern. I basically constructed the whole thing before I was able to sensibly try them on for fit. My brain was telling me that they were going to be too big, and they sure were! I took 3cm off each side seam and 2cm off the inside leg. Do the maths people – that’s a whopping 10cm and the legs are still not fitted!!
Unfortunately all the adjustments meant that I lost my topstitching on the inside leg and down the side of the hip. I just couldn’t face redoing it so I have no topstitching where it can be seen.
The nature of these jeans/pants/trousers is that I want and need to wear long tops over them, meaning that all the details are invisible, so here a photo of the faux pockets and faux fly.
and the back pockets, which I didn’t embellish on this pair but will definitely be doing something fancy on the next pair.
You can see that the legs are not really tight on me. I thought hard about this and decided that I quite like the shape – fitted without being too skinny. Unusually, these have not needed any messing around with the crotch curve and I don’t have the usual wrinkle under my backside. I think this is a real win. The pattern has a cropped option but I will never make them because I look terrible in cropped trousers.
One of the interesting construction steps was the waistband. There is a front and back waistband and the elastic is cut to fit each piece, sewn in and then the waistband is sewn together and joined to the top of the jeans. I didn’t know if I liked this and almost changed it before cutting out, but went with it and I have to say that I really like it.
I have worn these endlessly since making them. They are super comfortable and of course uber stretchy. I haven’t managed to get many photos but note that I got photobombed by Archie whilst I was loitering with camera remote in hand.
What I love about these pants is that I can dress them up or down. They go brilliantly with most of my jumpers and tops but put on a coat and some fancy shoes and I’m ready to head off for coffee or lunch.
It should be noted that just after making these I was having an email chat with Hélène and she reminded me that I had made Vogue 8859 and of course I realised that this may have been the pattern I hacked. I may rehack it as they have a beautiful fit too.
I am going to make some black ones next but I also feel the need for a denim pair, so you may see these popping up on the blog at some point.