Butt like a b, tummy like a d: Pants Fitting Evolves By The Year

This is for the Green Violet, and for me.

I did slap this together to get it done, and I will probably edit it later.

Shall I compare me to a basketball?

So, me and the Violet were discussing the 'sway back' alteration.

https://thegreenviolet.com/2019/02/14/decades-of-style-ophelia-overalls/

I realized that I had been changing up how I fit my pants without notating what the changes were and how I got there.

I do keep this blog for my own reference, you know.

This is my one piece pants pattern 'sloper'. It fits well enough for tights, and it's where I am editing any pants from. I can divide it into a front and a back on the side line if I need to. I can make it bigger, but I cannot make it smaller cause that's how big I am.

Like so. Well, it needs some darts.

This is the business part of the one piece jeans pattern (minus the fly). It has four 'darts' in the waistband. 

1) is a tiny 1/2 tuck in the front in the gap between the pocket piece and the front piece. Doesn't show, helps with my growing front porch belly.

2) is a slash/curved dart on the side seam. It has much function that it performs with the pocket assembly, and a long slow, mostly narrow dart that works well until we get to the top and we curve in. 

Not super sharply.

3) is the secret sauce for me. To be discussed in a minute.

4) the back center seam is a dart. The center front is straight up and down, because that's what the fly zipper wants to do. If these were pull on elastic waist pants, I'd curve that front seam cause 60 yr old Front Porch!

So, dart number 3. It used to be a three inch long narrow dart (in green), like you see in most pencil skirts. It's apex is at the butt apex. The newer version (in blue) is shorter and wider. My butt apex is noted by a heart! 

I'm unclear exactly who I figured this out from: Sandra Betzina, a Lois Hinse pull on pants pattern, the ether itself, but I learned that dart does two things. 

A dart reduces bulk where there's too much, and allows for more volume at the apex. It creates a line rather than a fold. You are trying to get the fabric to lie smoothly over your cheek. 

And if your cheek has a different shape, you choose a different dart.

I believe the proper ladylike term for me is that I have a "high hip".

I have a big butt, yes, but I have a porch. I don't have a slope to the fullness part.

I have a ledge. 

I sew for a friend who has about fifteen inches difference between her waist and her hip. And that has a 5 inch height drop.

I have about a 10 inch one (35 - 45) and it happens in about 3".

Fabric will pool above my butt apex because it can't deal with the sudden transition.

I can't put a back yoke on jeans without the curve being super extreme (or I have to put a dart in the yoke, which seemed like too much work).

We used to call this a swayback alteration, but that's inaccurate. My waist is not going in and coming out at an extreme angle, my butt is just going out at one.

My back drops right into my waist.

The heart is where the real bulge is on my butt. Not on the side or the gluteal center, but on the iliac crest. Also, my tummy is catching up with my butt.

I'm just here to report, not to analyse. 

side red lines to show difference. The left side is where I had the hip replacement, btw.

These two photos are from the Ruby Joggers pattern test, for Paprika Patterns. What struck me in this photo is the back yoke line.  The plane it illustrates is sloped but relatively flat at the center and on the left side, and rises up on the right. The side curve really shows it. I have that curve on the left, but it's farther from the side.

A longer dart won't give me the fabric I need at that point. And just like the seams on a basketball, you need more than two to properly wrap a sphere.

(rotated to give you a better idea what I mean.) Those seam lines aren't all the same shape, are they?