Saturday, 14 July 2018

Field Trip Cargo Pants

The second pair of pants I made for the kid with the cold ankles are the Oliver + S Field Trip Cargo pants.


It's been years since I made these pants for him. I use the raglan T-shirt from this pattern all the time, but I've only made him the pants twice before and once for his sister.

I consulted with him about the pattern and then went ahead and ignored his request to not put the cargo pockets on the side. He was good natured about it and we've agreed that the pattern can be a base for some school pants without cargo pockets another day.


The pockets are just really fun. They're constructed with sort of bellows at the edges so they really are as three dimensional as they look in these pictures. It had been a few years and I couldn't help myself but make them again.

Of course they add a fair bit of work to some already quite involved pants. The front is three panels with nice darts at the knee and lots of edgestitched and topstitched seams.


The back has two parts to the leg and regular patch pockets. The waistband is finished with a facing and belt loops and there's an easy to sew faux fly.

I made the size 10 with size 12 length. I only adjusted the length below the crotch seam so the rise and waist height is still that of the size 10. It was a bit confusing to get all the leg panel pieces the right length but luckily everything lined up. They're suitably long and could possibly do with the cuff being turned up once.

Mostly they are long because they're sitting a bit low on his waist. The main pitfall of sewing after dark (lack of sleep notwithstanding) is that I end up guessing at waistband elastic length. He tells me these are a bit loose. Thankfully not so loose that I'm compelled to unpick the casing and change anything. (thanks kid)


The fabric is a heavy duty something (poly/cotton maybe) that I picked up at Eliza's Fabrics for $3/metre. I intended to use it to muslin pants for me or Flipper but it looked perfect for these cargo pants. It's quite wide, so I suspect these are only about $4.50 worth of pants. Although double that figure for the amount of thread that gets used!

Details:
Pattern: Oliver + S Field Trip Cargo Pants
Size: 10 width, 12 length
Fabric: mystery poly/cotton home dec weight 
Notions: thread, elastic, button (for decoration)

NB: It turns out Blogger had some technical bug with commenting when EU privacy laws changed. I have finally found the solution to being notified that comments have been made and are awaiting approval, but sadly all comments now seem to come from a no-reply@blogger address so replying directly to you is getting harder. I'll keep working on it.... or change hosting services.....
Shelley xx

8 comments:

  1. Oh, these are fantastic! Since we were talking about this one recently, I pulled it out and traced off both patterns in Joe's size. I was thinking of using a lightweight denim to make shorts for Joe (questions I must address - will I cut it off right at that second knee panel? I might have to see how that looks) and I was hoping that if I used a buttery soft knit for the facings, he wouldn't mind that it's a woven. He is getting minutely less picky as he grows. It's not something anyone who doesn't spend most of the their time with him would even notice, the pace is nearly glacial, but it's happening.

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    1. Sorry for the late reply. Your shorts are fabulous, so the answer of course is to do exactly what you did!! :) But you did remind me of one of my favourite ever boy outfits: Way back in 2013, Nicole (abcchildresndesigns)made this awesome outfit based on the Field Trip pattern: https://www.flickr.com/photos/abcchildrensdesigns/8411806865

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  2. These are terrific - congrats with the bellows pockets, I've never attempted them. Or felt the need...

    What will you do when the Oliver & S patterns are too small?

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    1. Fair enough, bellow pockets are probably never a necessity :)
      What will I do?.... The experience of many otehrs is that the kids no longer wish to have a handmade wardrobe by that age, or I will have found a new hobby. But if they're still up for it and I am too then I'll be tinkering with XS men's patterns. There seems to be a fair bit of "tween" stuff around for girls, but a lot less for boys. Indie patterns often do cover the teenage years, and I'll use my Oliver + S skillset to negotiate the sometimes inadequate instructions/drafting.

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  3. Those look fantastic! I love this pattern - it was one of the first Oliver + S patterns I ever sewed. I was still pretty new to sewing and they took me FOREVER, but the end result was totally worth it.
    As always, thanks for sharing your projects, I'm always inspired!

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    1. Aw thanks Emily. It's certainly a time consuming pattern but one that makes you look pretty clever by the end.

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  4. These look fantastic and I really like the look of the cargo pockets for a casual pair.

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    1. THanks Sharon. It's a good pattern for casual kid pants. I've seen other people double the knee panel too which seems a clever idea given boys and their ability to wear hole sin the knees of their trousers!

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