Copy Cat: 12 Months, 1 Pattern, No Repeats

I am copying the heck out of my Sew Sista, Stephanie! Stephanie AKA The Sarcastic Sewist, is doing an exciting, year long blog series using the Diane Joggers from 5outof4 Patterns. She will be using the pattern options as well as hacking the original design to make 12 different pants to cover every possible need you have in your wardrobe. You can read her original post here. 

Her look was created with French Terry for the bottoms and DBP for the top. So I knew I wanted to do the same. I also knew that since I have never sewn this pattern before, I would want to make a muslin. A muslin (or a toile) is basically a mock up of a pattern made with the purpose of testing fit, determining personal adjustments, or even practicing unfamiliar techniques. You don’t use your high dollar fabrics or fabrics you need to make look good for a promo (my situation). At times, pants can be a bit tricky to get right even if an amazing designer has drafted them. My issue is that I have a large belly, no hips and no booty. When I take my hip measurement into account, I am put solidly into a size 5x with these pants. I am also lucky enough to know that The Diane Joggers, The Zen Pants, and The Molly PJ’s all have the same rise. This means that when measuring from the front waist band, between my legs, over my booty and up to the back waist band, all three of the patterns were created equal. Since I tested the Molly PJ set, I knew that making a 5X would have me swimming in fabric. With Molly, I tried making a 4x and grading my legs to a 3x. This worked well for me. My Molly fabric was DBP, so it has more stretch than French Terry. Because of this, I didn’t want to grade down to the 3x for my legs. I needed these pants to have their intended look, which is fitted, but not skin tight and I needed them to look good in public.

These Diane Joggers are a straight 4x. I only adjusted for height. These are my mock up pair and I only removed 3 inches from the length. When I tried them on it was clear that I needed to remove about another 2 inches so you can see the cuffs I worked so hard to put on. 🙂

I choose to add the pockets since this is a copy cat and Stephanie made pockets. I used a decorative stitch on my regular sewing machine to decorate the pockets. I used the wonder tape which was suggested in the pattern and in Stephanie’s blog post. It honestly did make this so easy. Here is photo of my decorative stitching. I like the loop to loop design with the polka dot print. You can also see that I topstitched along the top of the pocket and made the drawstring casing for the waistband.

I used this Gray French Terry fabric as my muslin. I picked this up months ago from Rosa at Sew Blessed. As always, her prices are low and her inventory changes almost weekly. I knew I wanted a solid top to wear with these pants so I wore my Paris top that I recently made to wear with my Arabella Skirt. The Coral solid looks lovely with the darker gray in my pants. I was lucky enough to have these flip flops which are nearly a perfect color match!

Since overall, I was happy with the fit of these pants, the only change I made was removing 2 more inches from the length. I am only 5’1. This will most likely always need to be done when I make pants.

These are my second pair of Dianes. I am obsessed with this fabric. It is French Terry from Stitchin’ Pretties. The print is called Hallie and here is the direct link to it. I love how it looks a little bit vintage and a whole lot of pretty.  My shirt here is Molly. Yes, Molly is a PJ top, but it is also a neatly fitting basic T-shirt which comes with a Full Bust Adjustment. I added several inches to my sleeves (remember Stephanie shortened hers) and did a Full Bicep Adjustment. I also added 3 inches to the shirt length so the world wouldn’t see my belly. My fabric is this Dark Hunter Green from Stitchin’ Pretties. My boots are covering my cuffs here, but I did shorten my length and they no longer pool around my ankles. I wanted to be able to wear this outfit to work, so I dressed it up a bit with boots and added some pretty jewelry my friend, Tonya, gave me.

These pants have a drawstring waist. I used a long narrow piece of my French Terry to make the tube. If you make tubes, Tube Turners will save you so much time and frustration. I was able to turn this narrow piece in about 30 seconds. I used an elastic bodkin to pull it through the waistband and that took about another 30 seconds. I double knotted the ends of my so they wouldn’t easily pull through my waistband. I am very happy to report that these pants stayed up all day! I was worried that they would slip down and fall down as the day drug on. NOPE, didn’t budge!! I am such a happy girl!

Let’s get you some pattern links. All of these patterns are sized up to 5x.

Diane Joggers

Molly Top and PJ Pants

Paris Party Top and Dress

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