Thorsberg Pants: Part 2

I spent 8 hours working on my pants again last night. All I managed to do was get the waist band piece attached the to the main body of the pants, and lose a needle somewhere in my chair. Have no fear it will turn up the next time I sit down for a evening of sewing.

I did run into a problem while trying to even up the fabric of the pants before attaching the waistband. Actually, now that I think about it it isn't really a problem so much as an annoyance. It goes back to the problem with the leg pieces twisting oddly during sewing. Now that I look at the pictures, I see that my waistband is going to end up looking similar to the extant example. One side will be wider than another. The main difference, as far as I can tell from the photographs of the original, the width difference on mine will only be visible from the side.

Anyone who has worked with patterned  fabric knows just how hard it can be to join the pieces together so it looks fairly seamless. I cut the fabric for the waistband from the left over pieces, along the longest edge, or the fabric. That fact, and the way I trimmed the pants themselves to try to even out the fabric, means that my waistband doesn't match up in any way with the pattern on the pants themselves. Luckily, I wear thigh to knee length tunics which will cover that rather unprofessional looking bit of seaming.

One advantage, to the way I attached the waistband to the pants, is that the waist band itself will be level at the very top. Again, much like the original. The only way I can test my theory about the leg pieces twisting and causing the unevenness of the waistband is to create another pair with the exact same pattern. I will not use the extra heavy duty seam, instead I will opt for a more period seam. I will also use some very light weight linen, essentially creating myself a pair of underpants, which I will then use under the wool pants I plan to make later.

Speaking of seam, I did figure out what kind of seam I am making. A chance post on Pinterest about a Medieval Bra reconstruction mentioned a felled seam. Since I had no idea what that meant, and the picture looked similar to my seam, I decided to look it up. I am creating a felled seam, and based on the various tutorials, I am going about it a completely different way. I start with my fabric edges lined up, fold it over to the left and stitch it down, then fold it to the left again and stitch it along both sides. Now, according to this page flat felled seams are within my period time frame using a hem stitch which I am not using. So are my seams period? I'm still not sure but considering how durable they are, and how well they prevent unraveling of woven fabric, I bet someone used something similar in the past.

The waistband on the original pair of pants is 7 cm ( 2.5 inches) wide on one side and ranges between 4cm and 7 cm on the other side. My plan is to make my waistband as close to 7 cm as I can. It will be interesting to see if my waistband exhibits a similar difference in width along the other side. If it does then my pants will only differ from the extant by the type of fabric I used. Or course without having access to the originals to study and photograph I can only speculate.