Today’s task is choosing materials for the stilt pants and creating a pattern for the shorts baseball stilt pants. Last week I created a test pants pattern, sewed it, and put it on Leah. When the shorts fabric arrives, I will sew the shorts pattern. After that, probably next week, I order the full-length fabric, draft the full-length pattern, and sew the final full-length stilt pants!
Fabric Choice
I have ordered samples and chosen Scuba Double Knit fabric from Fabric Warehouse. After consulting with my friend Chenoa Albertson, I decided that I wanted a non-spandex fabric because the pants fit loosely and might distort with too much stretch. That pretty much left me with the Scuba fabric that I have chosen.
Shorts Pattern Drafting
The baseball stilt pants pattern will include the following features:
- Waist Darts
- Front Zipper Fly
- Waistband with belt loops
- Stripe on outside leg seam
There will not be pockets on the front or the back.
This video by Thoughtful Creativity shows a good way to copy a pattern. I’m going to be using a mix of this base pattern combined with the measurements and test pattern from last week. This video briefly covers how to sew the fly pattern but it will be covered in detail in another video.
The following video shows how to draft a zipper fly and a waistband for pants.
I will have to find some instructions for constructing the jeans from the fabric and the pattern (or just wing it).
Though it is not commonly used this way, my patterns are designed in AutoCAD Fusion 360, exported to DXF, then printed to 8.5×11 mosaic in Adobe Illustrator.
Next steps are to (1) finish off the shorts pattern and then (2) sew the shorts pattern after the shorts material arrives. When I (3) draft the full-length stilt pattern, I will linearly flare the legs out to the full with in order to achieve the proportions that Chenoa thinks will work and that match the original garment.