Today it’s the Lander Pants by True Bias and I’ve got both my wearable muslin and ‘real’ pair to share for your viewing pleasure.

Or something like that!

For the record, I do feel that these Lander Pants actually look a bit better in real life than they do in these photos.

Here’s a bit of insight into ‘behind the blog’ life: taking blog photos is a massive pain in the butt.

I don’t have any capacity to do it myself, so I rely on my lovely husband. He doesn’t mind doing it, in principle. But what he does mind is the fact that lighting conditions from oh approximately November-March each year means that the light where we live is so poor that any time the sun is actually out, I go into “quick, there’s light, we need to take photos” mode. Now, the light usually hits our apartment early morning and he is usually sitting bleary eyed in pyjamas nursing a weekend wake-up coffee when I demand that photos need to be taken right NOW or else it could be a month before we can do it again!

Well, let’s just say, it isn’t the best way to start a weekend!

And taking photos outside isn’t really an option cuz, you know, it’s not really acceptable to leave your child alone while all the adults in the house leave to take blog photos. And as for the idea of taking blog photos outside with the 5 year old in tow?

Yeah right!

So yeah, taking blog photos during winter time totally sucks.

So, with a view to safeguarding his weekend mornings, my husband bought me a couple of soft boxes for Christmas to see if we can use the light to make the task more manageable. Unfortunately, for now, neither of the two of us, know how to take advantage of the light boxes because it seems in these photos that I’ve managed to highlight every shadow in the pants and lit the wrong part of the shots. But bear with me, hopefully we’ll get better at it!

Ok, let’s get to the Lander Pants.

My Lander Pants

The Lander Pants have been such a favourite in the sewing community for a long time now, so I’m definitely coming late to the party on this one. Not really sure what’s taken me so long but I suddenly woke up one morning thinking – that exposed button fly, those pockets, it’s rather lovely, isn’t it?

My Lander Pants are a size 16. The maximum size available is size 18 so it is not at all an inclusive sizing range, going up to a maximum hip size of 46.5 inches.

The pink pair is denim and is view B – the cropped version. The brown/rust pair is view C and is made out of a tencel canvas. No that is not a mistake, it’s an actual fabric, but more on that later!

The pink pair (my muslin) are made in a denim that’s been in my stash for a while. They actually have the tiniest bit of stretch in them, contrary to the recommendations, but it worked fine and they are the most comfortable of these two pairs by far, thanks to that stretch.

When this denim arrived, the tone was a bit more jewel-toned than I had imagined and I wasn’t entirely convinced by the colour. Then I had that “new-denim disaster” of somehow making lines appear all over it during pre-washing, you can see this quite prominently at the back.

As a result of these mishaps, this fabric had languished in the stash for ages. Then, when I was thinking of sewing the Lander pants, it seemed a good chance to use it up in a useful way!

The reason I decided to make a muslin was because my main fabric was fascinatingly awesome and I didn’t want it to go to waste.

It is called “Tabby Canvas” from Meter Meter and it is canvas made entirely from tencel. This is the “Pecan” colour. It feels completely bizarre because it has the weight and solid hand feel of canvas, but it is ridiculously soft and drapes at the same time. It is one of the strangest fabrics I’ve ever used because it constantly feels like it has properties that your brain tells you aren’t supposed to go together!

The tabby canvas was mostly a pleasure to sew but it does fray ridiculously. I’m a tad worried that I may have clipped too close to the seam when turning some corners out, but time will tell.

And fray stop will save me if necessary!

** UPDATE MAY 2021** Unfortunately, my worry about fraying was all too apt! I just wanted to pop back in to this post to report that after wearing the tabby canvas lander pants only TWO times, the entire crotch, part of the side seam and the edges of one patch pocket have completely frayed and come apart. Perhaps I did something wrong (wrong needle?) but I would definitely not recommend this fabric for garments which have to be able to withstand stress!!! I’m not going to update anything else in the blog post cuz life’s too short but just wanted to quickly jump in and add this little word of warning**

As much as I like the fabric, I feel that overall it is perhaps a tiny bit too light for the Lander Pants. You can see this at the end of the day around the fly particularly, where it doesn’t quite have the heft necessary to keep everything looking neat. It starts to look a bit “stretched out”. Perhaps I could have used a heavier interfacing around the fly to have improved this.

Overall, I would love to use this fabric again, but I would stick to the upper body. I think it would make a fabulous chore jacket – I’m thinking of the shortest version of the Sienna Maker Jacket! The Ilford Jacket by Friday Pattern Company would work well too. In white canvas, a chore jacket out of this fabric, would be just lovely for spring. It could also work pretty well for pants that don’t rely on a having bit of heft – I think the Miller Trousers by Paper Theory could work really well for a weightier pant.

Sewing the Lander Pants

I found the Lander Pants to be a straight forward sew and encountered no major problems.

On the pink muslin, I’ve gone for contrast topstitching, which I have matched to the colour on the inside of the denim. On the canvas pair, my topstitching is in a matching colour for a more subtle finished look.

After sewing my muslin, the only change which I desperately needed to make was replacing the straight waist band with a curved one. The straight rectangular waistband included in the pattern stood inches away from the curve of my back and was totally unwearable on my body.

I kept the bottom of the waistband the same size (obviously – as it needed to fit the pants!) but I needed to take it in about 4cm at the top of the waistband, so this required quite a bit of curving it out. Needing to switch to a curved waistband obviously also meant that I needed a waistband and a waistband facing, rather than a waistband which is simply folded over, which is how the Lander Pants are designed.

After my muslin, I was pretty happy with the fit around the crotch and felt as though it was one of those situations where, if I tried to play around too much with the crotch curve, I could create new problems just as easily as I could solve them.

So I kept the Lander Pants as drafted around the crotch.

Looking at these photos, I should also probably have moved the back pockets a tad closer to centre and made them slightly smaller on my body, so that the bottom of the pocket hits right at the butt curve, not below. Note to self: get someone to take a photo of my butt when making a muslin cuz trying to stare over my shoulder in the mirror clearly doesn’t quite cut it!

Of course, this problem would be easy to rectify even now if I build up the strength to unpick triple stitching!

I found the instructions for the Lander Pants easy to follow, although, if I’m being nit-picking, a couple of minor things bugged me. The use of only inches, not cm, throughout the instructions is one of my personal bug bears. Also, I found there were several occasions where the instructions would have you switching constantly between sewing and overlocking, even though the steps could have easily been ordered to have enabled larger chunks of overlocking to be done at once.

As someone whose sewing space does not enable a sewing machine and overlocker to be side-by-side, I have to move one machine over and replace it with the other each time. So, it does bother me a bit when instructions switch excessively between the two, rather than more cleverly ordering things.

I did find myself switching the order of steps in the instructions for personal preference and convenience a bit. For example, the instructions have you connect the front and back at the inseam before sewing the fly, but I found it unwieldy to have the back attached to the front while doing all these details of the fly front.

For my second pair, I did the fly first and only attached the front to the back later. I found this much easier to maneuver under the machine while doing the fly front.

Speaking of the fly front, I really enjoyed constructing this. It was very easy and, dare I say it, fun! It was also helped by the fact that I had good quality jeans buttons from Blackbird Fabrics on hand.

Another thing I loved about the pattern was the inclusion of one-inch seam allowance at the side to allow some room for fitting. On my muslin, I didn’t need any extra room, but with the firmer fabric of my canvas pair, I absolutely did need to add in a little extra room at the sides and was very grateful the seam allowance enabled me to do this easily. Without that extra seam allowance, the canvas pair would have ended pretty badly for me!!

I think I will sew all pants in future with an inch side seam allowance for this same reason.

Hemming it!

On my body, I found the recommended hem lengths didn’t quite work.

For my pink version, I hemmed mine to be two inches longer than designed because I feel that the suggested length looked totally bizarre on my legs.

On the canvas pair, I found the hem length to be better, but I still made mine half an inch longer than designed.

Further, if there is anything in this world I am confident of, it’s my ability to get the hem length of pants wrong, so I’ve sewn these with simple single layer of top-stitching and will go back in to triple stitch it once I have worn them enough to be fully satisfied that I’ve gotten the length right.

Overall, I like these Lander Pants and feel that they will make a useful wardrobe addition.

Having said that, I do feel that there are other wide legged shapes in my wardrobe which probably work better on my body. For example, the wide legged version of the Pietra Pants.

Plus, after having worn my Lander Pants a few times, they aren’t uncomfortable and do have the correct amount of ease but, well, what can I say, they’re just not as comfortable as elastic!

I’m genuinely unsure, after this year of comfort dressing and working from home, whether non-elastic pants will ever feature prominently in my wardrobe again.

Who’s with me?

So, overall, this is a solid pattern that I enjoyed making, but I think I have other wardrobe items that serve the same purpose in ways that are more comfortable for me. At least now, I feel certain in that knowledge, which is actually pretty powerful in and of itself!

If you want to see more of my sewing adventures, you can find me on Instagram here.