I’m posting on launch day of Fibre Mood magazine to share my take on the Fibre Mood Betty Trousers.

Full disclosure: I received an advance copy of this pattern for free to make up and share. However, I also have a Fibre Mood magazine subscription paid entirely out of my own pocket. Speaking of which, in my humble opinion, this issue of Fibre Mood is one of the best in a long time – so many tempting patterns in it! My next month’s sewing may well just be dedicated to this edition.

Fibre Mood Betty

Fibre Mood Betty is presented as a high-waisted pair of balloon shaped trousers, featuring ’80s inspired embellishments. It is available in a maximum size catering for a hip size of 145cm and waist of 133.5cm.

My Fibre Mood trousers are a size 18, which coincided with my waist and hip measurements in the size chart. My first observation is that, when you check out the finished measurement chart, you will see that there is no ease at the waist. These are designed to fit very snugly at the waist so please keep this in mind when selecting your size.

I did make one immediate change to the pattern for my version of the Fibre Mood Betty. From the magazine photos, I wasn’t a huge fan of the length of the pants, finding it a bit awkward. I’m always wary of cropped lengths in cold-weather pants, thinking “yeah, cute, but how’s that going to look when she sits down?”. Or when she rides a bicycle on a cold, grey, dark winter’s morning?

After checking out the inseam length, I made a bit of a guess and added 17cm to the trouser length in my pair. That turned out to be a bit much. On my body, I’d say that 13-14cm lengthened from the pattern as drafted would have been my sweet spot.

Fabric choices

For my version, I have used a sturdy cotton gabardine which Atelier Brunette have released to coordinate with the colours of their printed range. This is the “Maple” colour.

It behaves like a denim and is of a similar weight, so it’s really easy and enjoyable to work with. It works well for this pattern which requires a solid bottom-weight fabric.

I’d note that I did use less fabric than recommended. My size enabled me to just manage to cut the legs out side-by-side on the folded-over fabric. Then, by cutting the waistband on the crossgrain, I was able to get this out of only 150cm of 150 cm wide fabric, which is pretty efficient. Unless you have wider fabric, however, I think my size was about the largest size where you would be able to squeeze the two legs side-by-side across the fabric, while keeping them on grain.

Sewing the Fibre Mood Betty

I really enjoyed sewing up Fibre Mood Betty. The interesting details and topstitching made it an engaging and satisfying project.

My favourite detail is definitely the slanted front pockets hidden under the front yoke. These pockets were fun to construct and came together really easily. I find them practical and useful in the finished product too.

A little tip on the back pockets, which applies to any pair of pants with rear patch pockets, is not to attach your back pocket until you can try on the finished garment and verify the best location for the particulars of your own rear end. I had to lower the back pocket placement about an inch to suit my body, which is pretty typical for me. I should have also gone a step further and taken a photo of my butt before sewing the pockets, rather than just squinting in the mirror and pretending I can see around corners, because these photos make it clear that I could have lowered them a little further still!

Speaking of yokes, one little thing I would point out which caused me a temporary moment of confusion at one point is that the front and back yokes do not meet at the side seam. I feel like if they did, maybe this pattern would be even better. But I’m sure as hell no pattern drafter so perhaps there’s a good reason why this couldn’t be done?

The Fibre Mood Betty included instructions for a fly construction method which was new-to-me. And I was pleased that I actually really enjoyed it. I would say that it’s the simplest and most instinctive method I’ve every used to construct a fly.

One of my favourite things about sewing is that you can always teach an old dog new tricks!

The sewing challenges

I only experienced a couple of small “hiccups” while sewing.

The first is that my waistband barely fit onto my finished pants.

Uh-oh!

The waistband is a straight waistband. Usually, I’m not a huge fan of straight waistbands, finding curved waistbands to suit me better, but I found that because the general fit around the waist of Fibre Mood Betty is snug, the straight waistband worked on me without issues (often they gape at my back). The shaping here really comes from the yokes, so the straight waistband doesn’t really have to do any heavy lifting, which I think is why it works.

But, my issue was that, by the time you factor in the fact that I may have sewn or cut inaccurately or that my pants stretched out a bit while sewing, when I went to attach my waistband, my pants were almost bigger than it! I managed to squeeze it all in without unpicking anything by sewing the waistband on with a teeny tiny 2mm seam allowances. However, I am now firm in my conviction that whenever I cut out a straight waistband in future, I will just add an extra inch to the length, just to make sure.

The only other part where I wanted to poke my eyes out with pins was the hem, but this was again entirely of my own making.

The lengthening that I did to the leg may have impacted on the proportions of the hem. Further, I forgot to look at the instructions at this late stage of my project (surely I’m not the only one who abandons instructions in the desperate push to finish the final details?). So I ended up sewing a deeper hem than was reasonable for this kind of leg shape.

This meant that the narrower part of the pant that I had folded up on the inside and was trying to hem against a wider point on the outside was just too narrow and I couldn’t sew it at the hem without visible puckering. If you follow the instructions and the pattern, I’m sure it should be fine. I’ll unpick mine and replace with a narrower hem to fix the problem when hell feeezes over.

Mom Balloons

All-in-all, I really like these Fibre Mood Betty trousers. It was actually the first time I have made a fitted Fibre Mood pants pattern and I was a little scared, but I found that the crotch length/depth etc worked really well for me.

The one thing I would note is that the pattern is described as balloon shaped, but I think that it looks more “balloony” on body types other than mine. When I look at the magazine version worn by the model, it has an oversized look from the hip downwards. On my pear shaped body, where my thighs are the widest point, this style is definitely very fitted all the way until mid thigh and only then does it become looser. I think this does give it a bit of a different overall look on me – it’s come out quite mom-jeans-esque.

While it’s different from the shots in the magazine, however, I do still like the shape. And it works with the ’80s vibe of the style lines.

On my body, if I want to achieve a fit more like in the magazine’s shots, I would definitely need to size up. Indeed, while these do fit, if I make them again, I will probably go up one size as these are definitely the most fitted thing I’ve worn around my waist for a while.

I really love the yoke detail and shaping and can actually see myself making this again, maybe modifying the leg shape to be wide-legged could be a fun future hack!

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