Button Fly jeans

These are my TNT Jalie jeans but I swopped out the zip fly for a button fly because I can never resist a challenge. I followed the instructions in David Page Coffin's Trouser book, though not to the letter as David's example involves making a button fly in a trouser without a waistband. Doing the fly with a waistband is simpler.

I was a bit concerned that the fly might not hold closed in such tight jeans but they seem OK so far, though I did have to move the buttons over a bit further because the originally placement allowed the attachment seam of the underlap to show to the world. The true test will be when I wear them all day.

In the picture, the hems aren't turned up properly as I wanted to take the photos whilst it was decent weather.

I've got blue hands from working with this fabric and I am very afraid that the dye hasn't stopped running. I normally don't put denim into the stash cupboard until its been through its prewashes. I picked it out and cut it assuming it was needle ready. I really do hope that it was.

The fabric is 4% lycra from Fabric.com and is the same fabric used for the jeans on the cover of the Jalie pattern, or so I am led to believe. This is an amazing fabric. Its really stretchy, but still a reasonable weight and I think the jeans are going to be supercomfortable. Which bodes well for the other two pairs.

This pair are topstitched in cranberry Gutermann Top Stitch thread which comes on a reel that doesn't seem to have quite enough thread on it to finish a pair of jeans. I was very careful to use only what I needed each time (having been caught out before by this particular thread), even reeling bits back on again rather than cutting off with long thread tails, but still I ran out before the end of the project. And I discovered this...... whilst topstitching the waistband. So not a particularly obvious area in which to run out of thread. Luckily, I had a couple of longer cut bits plus the bit that wouldn't run through the machine at the very end of the reel and was able to hand sew the missing two inches of topstitching. I had started next to a belt loop just in case I needed to hide hand sewing somewhere inconspicuous. I could have done with the reel having forty metres on instead of thirty. And of course, its a bank holiday weekend here, the fabric store is not open again until Wednesday, and I have two more pairs of jeans cut out ready to go... and one reel of Top Stitch for each pair... a different colour for each naturally.

I will try and remember to only do one line of topstitching, to the hip level, on the side seams. Which should then allow the rest of the important areas to be done. Or I hope it will.

I did the Jalie waistband method which has you put the right side of the band to the wrong side of the pants and sew it on. Then stitch the ends and turn them, then lie the turned under edge of the waistband on top of the stitching line just made, and topstitch the band into place. I've got into difficulties with this method in the past, but today, I used my new fave item; Steam A Seam, to stick that band into exactly the right place before top stitching it. And it worked really well.

The only other changes to the waistband were: cutting on the straight grain not on the bias and cutting the band in one piece not two. Then the final change; I put interfacing onto the band. The pattern doesn't say to do this but the denim is so stretchy that when I tacked the band into place without the interfacing, I could almost slide the jeans off without undoing the buttons. On past versions I used a band faced with quilting cotton which works very well to stabilise the band.

Tomorrow it will be on to version two.