Dress Shop 8
How Dress Shop Pants Have Changed

Perhaps the biggest change done with the release of Dress Shop 8 is how pants patterns are drafted. The options and fit are better than ever before. New styles are included, new pocket types are available, there is a contoured waistband for better fit at the waist and a fold-over waistband (far right photo below) for a trendy look. There is a new Pants Customizer tool coming next month (we are making certain that all of the older Dress Shop pants patterns work with it fully) that provides even more adjustments, options, and enhancements.

Whether you are making jeans, dress pants, or yoga pants, the new Dress Shop pants look great
from the front, side, or the back. With the enhanced fit, they go together quick and feel great!

To get the best results from these new patterns, you should know what has changed and what you may need to do to your chart to make it work with these changes. This page talks about the changes. At the bottom is a link to the page that talks about your chart and how to optimize it for the new pants patterns.

The custom fit pants patterns produced by Dress Shop were the result of 18 years of research, experiments, workshops, and feedback from thousands of customers describing their bodies, charts, and the fit that they get both from custom pants patterns, but also from ready-to-wear pants and pants produced by a seamstress or tailor. Dress Shop pants patterns were refined many times over those years and they were able to produce better fitting pants for most customers than any other source available.
 

But, there was room for improvement. Some of our more advanced sewing enthusiasts and demanding fit-perfectionists had pointed out a variety of issues with their pants patterns that just could not be resolved fully using dart size and ease adjustments. The incredible diversity of body shapes and curves was just not fully accommodated by the drafting logic that Dress Shop had been using.

In January of this year, our design team, developers, and testers began a massive, focused, totally dedicated overhaul of all pants patterns. The results of that can be subtle when you just look at the patterns themselves. You may not notice every change until you get your measurements adjusted (slight changes may be needed) and you have made a few pairs.

Once your chart has been updated, you should find that your pants fit better, feel better, and look better, with fewer pulls, wrinkles, puckers, or crooked seams. Every bit of the pants patterns should fit better.

Figure 1 here shows a Dress Shop Fitted Pants pattern from before this recent change. It's not a bad pattern. It made pretty good pants. But, there were elements that were not quite what this customer preferred.

What could be improved here?

Figure 2:
Areas To Improve Upon

A. The waistline on this pattern is not too bad, but some with tilted waistlines would get wavy lines at the waist that did not produce a good straight seam when the darts were sewn up. And, the dart caps were sometimes too tall.

B. There's a bulge to the outseam between hip and waist. The darts may not remove all of the excess fabric here.

C. The outseam does not hit the target back hip measurement line. The gap between outseam and the hip reference line means loose fit and possible wrinkles.

D. The crotch curve dips below crotch depth slightly. This J-hook is more pronounced with some other charts and may not produce the desired fit here. Also, the crotch extension produced is longer than the specified crotch extension amount. The user asked for 4.29" and they actually got 5.5" or more. Crotch fit was less than it should have been.

E. "Collateral ease" occurs whenever the draft routines are unable to precisely hit the target measurement. With this pattern, there is collateral ease at the thigh, knee, calf (that reference line was not displayed in Dress Shop 7) and ankle. Pants could be looser than intended and unbalanced ease could make the leg skew or twist.

F. Not pictured in this illustration, but there were also cases where inseam and outseam were not well balanced - shaped essentially the same. This could cause twisting of the pants leg.

G. Also not pictured, but there were cases where front and back outseam were not the same shape, making sewing them together difficult. This could cause puckers and side seams that were not straight.

None of these particular pattern limitations or flaws could be corrected with measurement changes, ease changes, or by adjusting dart depth or width. The only way to get this pattern better were changes to the pattern drafting design rules and line drafting procedures. That was done with Dress Shop 8.

Figure 3:
Dress Shop 8 Fitted Pants Front

This is the pattern produced by Dress Shop 8. Every aspect of the pattern has been improved. Inseam and outseam are balanced. Front and back pants legs also closely match. There are no steep curves to either inseam or outseam, so sewing it will be easier and less prone to puckers. To read how this was done and how your chart may effect results, click here.

Equally important, though, both the inseam and outseam manage to hit every target measurement very closely. The only ease in this pattern is the intentionally provided ease. There is no collateral or unintended ease provided, so your pants will get only what was intended and those amounts are under your complete control.

When you select a fit-type for your pants (stretch fit, form fit, dress pants, casual pants, or relaxed fit pants), appropriate ease for every part of your pants is set for you automatically. The Fit - Ease dialog shows you the exact amounts and you can change any of those you wish if you prefer some different fit at some key body location.

With these patterns, you should now have far greater control than ever before over your pants design and fit. Dress Shop 8 pants will make you look and feel great with less effort.

Now that pants patterns are more accurately hitting every measurement you provide in your chart, you may find that the fit has changed, chart values that you adjusted to work with collateral ease are no longer providing the fit you want. To learn about the symptoms you might get and how to correct them, click here.