Oh my goodness, this has been an epic make! I don’t think I have ever made so many toiles!
I’m still not completely happy with the fit, but I can take solace in the fact I’ve made an incredibly comfortable pair of trousers. (Which, at the end of the day, is the most important thing). There are drag lines where I don’t want to see any, but I’m not sure with my current skill set that I can do any better. Certainly, the perfect pair of Ponte wheelchair trousers is eluding me at the moment. It is, however, a work in progress, and I’m on such a learning curve with my pattern drafting.
I quite naively thought that it wouldn’t be too difficult to adapt my standard seated trouser block to accommodate stretch Ponte. After all, my pattern books made it sound like it was simply a case of reducing the pattern to take account of the stretch. But the reality is that the fabric behaves completely differently, and things such as darts and crotch seams move (even when you’re seated).
Before I get into the finer details of my fitting journey, I want to tell you about my wonderful fabric. It’s a medium/heavy weight Ponte Twill from Minerva’s core collection. It’s breathable, being 67% viscose and 27% polyamide (nylon), and is lovely and soft against the skin. Both important considerations for wheelchair trousers.
I chose a stunning olive green colour, which is such a great colour match for so many of my other clothes. It has 40% stretch along both its width and length, which makes it very comfortable to wear but more complicated to design with.
I initially wanted to make a trouser that looked a little more formal and had liked the idea of a wider leg. It soon became obvious, however, that this design really didn’t work too well with my wheels. In the end, I kind of got the look I wanted by making the back lower leg a lot more fitted and then left the front wider to create the free-flowing draped effect.
I had to play about with the fitting of the legs to try to remove a lot of the excess fabric from behind my knee, which seemed more than in a woven fabric for some reason, so I solved this by cutting a separate back lower leg pattern piece (joined at the knee) and adding a dart to the front. I used my front waist fascia panel idea from my shorts block to try to reduce the amount of excess fabric in my lap, but this wasn’t as successful as with the woven fabric. It seemed that every time I tried them on, the seams seemed to have moved, and the fabric was stretching and falling differently.
I’m finally happy that I’ve got the waist fitting correctly, and the crotch fits very comfortably. I’m also happy with the way the leg hems fall, but I just wish I could eliminate the drag lines across my thighs.
I had a brainstorming session with my bestie, and we came up with something completely radical, so I will be trying that on my next attempt. For now, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for the next instalment of my wheelchair trousers drafting odyssey to see if this produces that elusive perfect pair of perfect seated trousers.
Image description: (There are six images taken from different angles showing Yvonne sat in her wheelchair in her garden. She is wearing a pair of Olive Green self drafted Ponte twill trousers.)
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