Thorsberg Pants: Part One

I always defaulted to the plain pants pattern, similar to the modern sweat pants style for my garb. At some point, no matter how loose I made them, the crotch would give out. This almost always happened when I was bent over trying to move something heavy or cooking at the centre fire pit while cooking lunch or dinner.

I've made a lot of pants since I joined the SCA and several of them have been Thorsberg or Thorsberesque pants for my spouse, Cennedig. He swears by them. He says they are the most comfortable pants he has ever worn in his life. He has never had a seam give out, now matter how tight they get stretched across his thighs or butt.

So, when I decided it was time for a new pair of pants I decided to give the Thorsberg a try for myself. Unlike all the other pants I have made I decided these were going to be all hand stitched. Why? Well, I'm pretty sure I am insane and like to torture myself. I decided I was going to make an entire set of garb by hand. I thought it would be a good idea to push myself a little and in the process find out how long it takes to sew clothes together without a machine.

This is the first piece I've hand sewn but it is taking the most time, and truly making me appreciate my sewing machine. My finger tips are sore and my eyes are strained after only 14 hrs spread over three days and I've only finished the main body of the pants. The legs and crotch are done but I still have to sew on the waist band, belt loops, and last of all figure out how the footies are sewn. Cennedig has also opted for the no footed style so this is a whole new kettle for me.

First, I had to decide what fabric to use. Cotton is a natural fabric that breathes well when it is hot and insulates a little when it is cool. I also had several metres of cotton plaid in my stash, which made that decision easy.

Before cutting the fabric I washed it. I do that with all natural fabrics. It was a hard learned lesson back when I first started making garb. A lovely linen tunic created for Cennedig shrank so much it was donated to a much smaller gentleman in our Canton.

Then I had to figure out the dimensions of the pattern pieces. To the left you can see my worksheet. I took the pattern as shown on the Viking Men: Clothing: Trousers page, drew out each piece and using my measurements worked out what size each piece should be. You can also see that I made many changes to the dimensions along the way.

After sewing the legs and crotch pieces together I figured out that I have to change the size of the pieces. As you can see in the second photo the back of the crotch pieces do not come up level with the tops of the leg pieces. I'm not sure if that is because I calculated incorrectly or if the types of seams I chose used more fabric than expected.

The seams I am using do not seem to be period but I thought they would give me the best chance of now blowing out a seam due to torn fabric or broken stitches. I'm not even sure what to call this seam. I stitch the two pieces of fabric together with a running stitch then fold the two pieces of fabric over so that all the raw edges are hidden. Then I run two parallel rows of running stitches along the edges. It creates a very strong seam but the extra folds of fabric may be causing some measurement troubles.

The problem of the legs not sewing on evenly may actually explain something seen in the extant example of the pants. The extant example has different sized waistbands on either side of the pants. If you look at my pants you can see that one leg extends almost 2 inches above the centre crotch piece while the other side is only 1 inch higher even though both my leg pieces were the exact same size.

It makes me wonder if the shape of the crotch pieces somehow causes the leg pieces to twist as they are being sewn. If my measurements had been correct maybe only the one side would be different, and I could correct it by having the waistbands be different sizes. For now though, I am going to cut off the excess fabric, even with the back piece, before I sew the waistband on.

One of the things about the Thorsberg pants I have made in the past is that the way the crotch pieces are mad there is a bit of what I call "saggy bottoms". I was hoping that hand sewing would somehow correct this problem. The picture to the left is proof that hand sewing does not fix that issue.

I believe the problem lies in the shape of the pieces. The back is wider than the crotch piece. The leg gussets sew to the crotch pieces and with the difference between the two crotch pieces it creates a fold on both sides.

In the past, to correct the saggy bottoms issue, I made the widest part of the back piece the same width as the other two pieces. My next pair of pants, sewed with a machine, will probably be made with all the pieces the same width. It will all depend on how comfortable the excess fabric in the back turns out to be.

Who knows maybe they had a really good reason for making them that way. And I will not really know until I wear them for a decent length of time and put them through their paces, preferably doing things as close to possible as the 100-300 A.D.