Pulling patterns from pants

"Hey, can you do me a favor?"
Famous last words.
My sister's pal needed new pants for work and not finding them to fit her.

(and don't we all? I wish I could link you to the monologue Merrill Markoe did on the endless hunt for the next pair of black pants, but think about it for a minute and you know what I'm talking about). 

I was volunteered. And I am doing my duty, Sister.

I didn't take enough photos. I put this job off and then I just did it.

Two pair of pants, doubleknit, both black, hard to see the seams, tracing off onto thumbprint tracing paper.

This is the only process photo I have, and I am pretty happy I have this. I could not see the seams very well, and I didn't have enough organza to trace them onto, or the will to purchase more organza for this job.

My workaround was to put pins in the points of the seams of the part I was tracing, at the points where direction or grain changed, and I played connect the dots with the pinheads on the tracing paper. It worked really well and gave me a more accurate read of the garment than just flipping back and forth with the paper and randomly stabbing with the pencil.

Kinda like this. Kinda. 
You remember how to connect the dots, right? 

I barreled right on.

I pinned the pieces onto the dress form to keep track of where I was in the process. And yes, this was a good idea, as I got lost and redid a piece by accident.

I traced the corrected pages onto muslin (bedsheets in this case) with a wheel and waxed paper. The wax makes a bigger line. 

Longtime readers will recall that this was the origin of my trusty TNT jeans pattern.  I did this years ago, following Kenneth King's 'Jeanius' video class on Craftsy/Bluprint, tracing onto white fabric. It skips the intermediate step of paper, but I wanted the chance to correct and consider the pieces, overlapping them and seeing the connecting lines to true them up. It is entirely possible these patterns will be made up by someone else, and I wanna do the right thing right now. 

So I cut them out

And sewed them up

With a long basting stitch

And some old thread

That spool is so pretty

 And here they are. Ready for the client to come over and try them on, to see what alterations need to happen.
Well, the striped ones need the teeny waistband.
But ready enough.