Wool Birchgrove Pants

The Birchgrove Pants are the latest pattern from Leila and me through Muna and Broad. We set out to make our most tapered pants yet, while still ensuring an excellent fit for fat bodies. These pants have even more room through the undercarriage than our previous pants, which helps to counteract the ‘hungry bum’ problem that I often had with pants. We designed the pockets so that they’d be gape free’, and I’ve been really excited to get these out in the world!

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Lilli from @frocksandfroufrou had made some Sculthorpe Pants in camel wool (see them here) which I loved, and she very generously offered to send me some of the same fabric, which she purchased locally in Australia. The fabric (and some matching thread) arrived before we went into lockdown and while I never did get around to making matching Sculthorpe Pants, I dug the fabric out since I thought they’d be great paired with the tapered Birchgrove Pants.

Fabric and construction: The fabric is a wool blend, which has a slight amount of give, I cut the pocket bags from viscose and I also did a viscose lining til just below the knee, as I am quite reactive to all things, but wool in particular. The pattern isn’t very fabric hungry, and you could also draft a pocket facing (like Meg did for her Glebe Pants) to save on fabric.

Lining: I taped the pocket piece to the front piece, to create a singly piece. I then cut 2 front and back pieces on the cross-grain, ensuring the selvedge finished at the knee. This meant that I didn’t have to finish the bottom edge of the lining, so there’s no visible bump. I constructed these pocketless viscose shorts, and attached them to the waistband of the wool pants.

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Size details: As always with the Muna and Broad bottoms, I made a straight Size F. I have a 54″ true hip, a 57″ high hip and where my pants sit (not my true waist) is 43″. The length on these is a little bit longer than our previous pants patterns, but you can check the provided inseam measurements to see if you might need to lengthen or shorten at the lengthen/shorten lines.

Outcome: I love these pants, and I can totally see more in my future. Perhaps a dressy pair in a slinky tencel? Maybe a casual ‘jogger style’, with a waist tie? I could see how they could easily be converted for a paper bag waist, and other fun things. For these particular pants, I had a hard time styling them because the brown wasn’t exactly the same shade as any of my brown leather shoes, they looked strange with black leather shoes and I couldn’t get a combination I was happy with when I paired them with sneakers. More experimentation is needed on my part for the shoes, but I love them with this ready-to-wear shirt that I’d love to make in other colours for myself.