Pattern mash alert: these babies are about 90% Persephone Pants (from Anna Allen Clothing) with 10% Ginger Jeans (from Closet Case Patterns) and I’m going to call it: these feel like pants perfection for my body.

Oh and did I mention that these Persephone pants are made out of cone denim!!!

Aghhhh!

That’s pretty much a sewing climax right there.

As soon as I saw all the lovely versions of the Persephone pants popping up everywhere, I knew I needed a pair.

Of course, I didn’t yet realise that I actually need 10 pairs!

Finding my shape

The reason I am so incredibly excited about the Persephone pants, is that I feel that I have finally found the pants leg-shape which works well on my body.

Which is a total revelation to me.

Growing up in the era of “skinny jeans are everything”, I’d pretty much accepted that pants just didn’t suit my body. And so I spent my life wearing skirts and dresses, as a result. Not that I’m complaining about that!

But the current resurgence of wide-legged pants and, in particular, these Persephone pants, have led me to a silhouette that I think actually works with my body.

Seriously guys, I can’t describe just how many little happy dances I did while sewing these and trying them on with glee!

All about the Persephone Pants

The Persephone Pants are high waisted pants based on US Navy Sailor Pants. The pattern is intended for non-stretch wovens, but I’ve sewn it here in Cone Mills S-Gene stretch denim (more on that later), which makes them just insanely comfortable.

Many people make comparisons between this design and the famous Jess Kamm Sailor Pants. Which cost $400 per pair! I have to confess that last year, I tried to recreate a similar look using the Nagoya Pants pattern, but the Persephone Pants are the vastly superior pattern for this purpose!

The Persephone Pants have a couple of really unique features. There are no side seams at all. Each leg is a single piece which wraps all the way around your leg. This makes them ridiculously comfortable. I had never before thought of the side seam as being “uncomfortable”, but now that I’ve experienced the liberty of being side seam-less, it may be hard to go back!

The Persephone Pants also have some rather clever hidden pockets (but more on those later!).

And these are genuinely, unashamedly, really truly high-waisted. These are the highest waisted garment I’ve ever worn.

Harry High Pants, eat your heart out.

And I love it. I have totally embraced the “Mom jeans” belly squeeze!

My Persephone Pants are a size 10. I have to confess that I made a bit of a gaff while cutting. I had cut the 10 around the waist and crotch and was about to cut down the leg. Then I look at the size of the leg piece and felt that it just looked so small! I wasn’t sure how it could possibly fit all the way around my entire leg.

So I freaked out and added an extra couple of centimetres to the width of the leg.

Which was totally unnecessary and caused some significant crotch bunching. So I had to remove it. Serves me right for not trusting the pattern. It just looks really strange seeing an entire leg in one pattern piece!

The only other size modification I made after baste-testing my Persephone pants, was to slightly increase the size of the back darts (by a little over a centimetre each), to stop a little gaping.

 

Persephone Pants: substituting a zip fly for a button fly

The Persephone Pants come with a very cool looking vintage-inspired covered button fly. Which is entirely in keeping with the origins of the pants.

But….

Sometimes I just need to get to the bathroom quickly, ya’ know. And while  I will countenance a button fly where it is for aesthetic purposes (OMG Heather Lou’s button front Jenny Overalls), I just can’t put up with that kind of inconvenience for a feature that is going to be hidden anyway.

So I knew I was going to substitute a zipper fly for the button fly that Persephone is designed with.

I did this with the help of the zip fly from my Ginger Jeans pattern. This was an extremely easy modification to make.

As the fly pieces in the Persephone pants are extra pattern pieces, whereas the fly piece in the Ginger jeans form part of the leg, all I had to do was skip pieces 5, 6, 7 and 8 of the Persephone pants. Then, I drew in an extra fly extension, to the front crotch of my Persephone pants, using the Ginger Jeans fly as my guide. I interfaced this little grown-on fly extension.

For the fly shield, I used the shape of the Ginger jeans piece for this, but extended it to the length of piece number 5 of the Persephone pants. But I think you could also just use piece number 5 of the Persephone pants as is.

Armed with these slightly modified pieces, my very first step in sewing these Persephone pants was simply to follow the Ginger Jeans instructions to install the zip fly.

Once the fly was all done and dusted, I skipped straight back to the Persephone Pants instructions.

So all smooth sailing for these zipped up sailor pants…

A little more help from Ginger

Now I did say that these are about 10% Ginger jeans. So it’s the Ginger fly, but what else, I hear you wondering.

Let’s talk waistbands.

The Persephone Pants have a straight waistband, just like the Flint Pants, which I have recently become addicted to.

Whilst I understand that a completely straight waistband is a perfectly normal option for a pair of high-waisted pants, I have always preferred curved waistbands.

And since the super-curved waistband that I made from my Ginger jeans pattern is pretty much the best fitting waistband I have ever worn, I decided that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So I just wacked on my Ginger jeans waistband to the Persephone Pants.

And all is well.

No back gaping. These babies stay up. In fact, they’re not moving anywhere. It’s true that maybe it wasn’t necessary and the Persephone straight waistband would have worked just as well. But, I’ve started to feel that curved is best when it comes to my body!

 

Pants-fitting

As per usual, I took my pants-fitting tips from the free Closet Case pants-fitting eBook.

Since I didn’t muslin, after assembling the fly, I just basted the pants together to play with fit.

I shortened the inseam (mostly just to remove the extra that I’d put in there during my “ahhh it’s too small” cutting freak out). I also did a low-seat adjustment.

There are still a few drag lines around the crotch, but I decided not to go too hard core on fitting.

I feel that white is always going to show up wrinkles, no matter what you do. And, from checking out high-waisted sailor pants online, it seems that some wrinkling is an inevitable part of this style of pants.

The only other “change” is that the Persephone pants are designed to be worn at a more cropped length. I think, to be worn as designed, I would probably need to shorten them by about an inch and half. But when I tried my Persephone pants on, I loved them just the way there were, as almost full-length pants.

So, I put in the tiniest hem I could manage and I’m just gonna call these full-length pants.

Please don’t try to disabuse me of this notion.

Speedy Sewing

For a pair of dramatic, high quality pants, my Persephone Pants really came together very fast. I managed to sew these in one week using weeknight evenings only, not even needing any weekend time!

The one feature that I think I might switch out next time is the pockets.

Now, of course, the lack of a side seam, makes for some challenges in the pocket department. And a woman needs pockets, of course!

I find the pockets in the Persephone pants, which sort of hang from the front of the waistband, to be a really clever solution to this problem.

But I still think I might skip them on my next pair.

Here’s why.

First, they are too visible in my opinion. Whilst the opening is like a little hidden secret, the pocket outline itself is a bit obvious. Maybe it’s just that white denim is particularly unforgiving, but I can see the outline of them and it bugs me no end. And they also tend to bunch up and move around when I put the pants on. I end up smoothing them around a lot to get them to sit in the right place. I could perhaps invisibly hand stitch them down in a few places, but that’s more work that I have to get up the motivation for.

In general, I just feel that the front of the pants looked a lot smoother before I installed the pockets.

Second, I don’t think I will use them very much! The thing with high-waisted pants is that I don’t want to sit down and feel the smooth, hard, unforgiving metal of my smart phone digging into my roly-poly bits. If I can’t use the pocket while sitting, I’d rather just forego the pocket!

And so, on to the next pair

So, these are my plans for my next pair of Persephone Pants.

I want to kind of jean-ify them up. Keeping this amazing leg shape but making something that reads more like jeans than sailor pants.

First, I’m going to shorten the rise so that they are not quite so high-waisted. Once the rise has been lowered, I think it will look OK to then add jeans-style back patch pockets. So I think I will do this and skip the clever, but not quite right for me, pockets of the original design.

Then I’ll add a little length to the leg so that I can have a proper hem.

I may also try to see what I can do about those drag lines. I’m thinking maybe re-drawing the crotch curve a little along the lines of a flat pubis adjustment.

Aahh, the names of crotch adjustments…

So…medical…..

And let’s round it off with some Cone denim love

These Persephone pants are made out of 10 oz Cone Mills S-Gene stretch denim in natural. This denim is actually designed to be ready to dye to your desired colour. But I decided to just pretend that it’s white!

I’ve had some Cone denim sitting in my stash for almost a year.

After seeing how much the sewing community gushes about this stuff, I decided to bite the bullet and have some shipped over from the US.

Seriously, why does NOBODY in  Europe stock cone denim????

It arrived. It looked lovely. It was beautiful to touch. But I was scared to cut into it!

Now that I have finally done it, I cannot believe how comfortable it is to wear. These are basically jeans, with a super high waist, and I feel just as comfortable as if I was wearing yoga pants. I had no idea that denim this comfortable to wear even existed!

This is a game changer. Despite having been on a lifelong search for the perfect jeans, I actually don’t wear jeans all that often. I can only wear them on the weekends and, even then, I only wear them when I’m going somewhere. Around the house, I never reach for jeans because they’re just not comfortable enough!

After my first order of Cone denim from Threadbare Fabrics last year, I thought, this stuff is great but I can’t justify ordering denim from the US again.

The thing is, the Cone denim itself is really well priced. Seriously, I pay more than the price of Cone denim at Threadbare to buy really crappy denim locally. But getting the good cone stuff over to Europe is expensive. International shipping cost me $US50. And there is a weight limit for international shipping so you can’t order a huge amount of it. Then, upon arrival, my import duties came to more than 50 euros. So, after that shipping/import hit, I thought this was a once-in-a-lifetime purchase.

But, the evening that I finished these pants, I jumped straight back onto Threadbare’s website and put in another Cone denim order. Cuz I simply hadn’t understood until now just how amazing this S-Gene Cone denim is to wear!

Honestly, if I lived in the US, I would simply buy 2 yards of every denim Threadbare ever sells. Because the prices and quality are just amazing!

Why does Europe lag so far behind on access to good denim?

Never mind, I’ve paid those pesky import duties now…

And a bonus cropped Inari tee

So am I the only one who finishes sewing a separate and then goes “now I need a new top to go with it”?

Notwithstanding that there are already ten tops in my wardrobe that work fine with it.

I finished these Persephone Pants and thought, hmmm, the white would look great with the lovely, but slightly odd coloured, Nani Iro linen print that’s been in my stash for a while. You know when you buy a fabric cuz it’s really pretty (and, in this case, on sale) but there is just something a little different about its colouring or texture or style which means that it doesn’t work with everything in your wardrobe and you’re just not sure what to do with it?

So I whipped up yet another Inari tee. This is number 4 for me. For the first time, I actually sewed it at the cropped length. I only had one metre of very narrow fabric, so I couldn’t really fit much more. And now that I have myself a pair of super high-waisted pants, I should be set.

I love the way these two look together. I would still feel more comfortable, if I’d added in just another 1-2cm of length, but it’s nothing that’s going to stop me from wearing it.

And don’t you love it when you know a make so well that you can whack it together in a couple of hours from start to finish.

So now I’m ready for summer.

And how long do you think I’ll manage to keep these white Persephones clean?

**************

UPDATE ***** 31 July 2018

Umm, so, as promised above, I made more Persephone Pants.

Just thought I’d share a few photos, in case anyone is interested in seeing how they look with slight variations.

First up, I have sewn basically my ultimate dream pair of jeans. This pair is made out of 12 oz  s-gene cone denim in indigo, from Threadbare Fabrics again! Of course!! So basically the same fabric as my white pair but slightly heavier.

I have shortened the rise by 2 inches for this pair and dropped the hidden pockets in exchange for back jeans-style pockets!

What do you think?

Then, just to see how much of a difference fabric can make, I also made the Persephone Pants in linen:

The linen is lovely, it’s a soft gold linen twill from The Fabric Store. These are the full high-rise version again, as I thought it would work better with the linen.

All three of my pairs are a size 10, but the two denim pairs each have some stretch which makes them a lot more comfortable! This linen pair is actually a little too tight (although it does stretch with wear, so it’s definitely still within a wearable range). The combination of the tightness and the fact that the fabric is more lightweight than the pattern is designed for means that this pair shows some wrinkle lines more than the other two pairs, but it’s not obvious enough to bother me.

The above photos provide a clear lesson in the importance of back pocket placement! The placement on the linen pair is definitely not the most flattering on me, the denim pair above is much better.

So there you have it, two more pairs of Persephone Pants to perhaps inspire you while you decide how you want to make your own pair!

And, ummm, yes, for sure, I still loooove this pattern!

 

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.