my first dress pants

So I bought a commercial pant pattern a few months back but didn't have the time to mess with it before the "Pennsic push".  It's a slow time of year for me minus the holiday stuff I'll have to start on, and I figured a good time to play.  I used some green linen I had in my stash to try out the pattern.  I made some adjustments to the pattern pieces based on Nancy Zieman's "Pattern Fitting with Confidence".  Mostly I just shortened some stuff.  Apparently this pattern is made for people over 6 feet tall, lol.  I'm still too long by about 4".  Based on what I wanted (pleated front, curved waistband with pockets) I purchased Simplicity pattern 2342.  It has three designs to choose from as well.  A slim fit, average and curvy.  I figured I had some good odds of finding the right one.  Wow, those are wide legs.  Let me just bring those in by another 4" around.  There, that's a little better.  I'm not quite sure what happened in the process but after following the pattern the pants could slide over my hips while done up.  Hmm.  Okay, this is either a case of people lying to themselves about their measurements and the company is placating them,  it's a crappy pattern, or its me.  Maybe a combo, but I'm not sure.  I don't tend to use as big of a seam allowance as it recommends, but this time I did it as it said so it wouldn't  be that.

I think they made it so huge to make sure that if the person screws up they have room to correct, but man that makes a lot of adjustment time for the rest of us.  I had to remove the top of the pockets to deepen the pleats.  I took in as much as I dared at the side seam until I was afraid of losing my pockets entirely!  Now there's too much fabric in the front but there isn't much I can do about it at this point.  I shortened the rise by a few more inches so I don't look like one of those teenagers with my pants fitting all funky.  It's hard to walk with the crotch length at your knees, lol.

I only need to add the inside layer to the waist band, hem the bottom (I'll get someone to measure that for me), and re finish the inside seams.  Voila!  Maybe I'll just reverse engineer these pants to make the next pair?  I do want to become better at using commercial patterns.  I think I'll play around some more with Nancy's methods.  I was afraid to make too many adjustments for fear of making them too small, but obviously I wasn't bold enough.