I’ve made a lot of Ginger Jeans throughout my few years of sewing and while I like them, I’m not sure they were the perfect pattern for me. The rise never felt 100% right in either the low rise or the mid rise and I felt like they didn’t really match my “skinny” jeggings from Nordstrom. Enter the Ash Jeans – I think I finally found my perfect jeans pattern.
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The Pattern and the Jeans
The Ash Jeans from Megan Nielsen are a four in one pattern featuring four different cuts and multiple cut lines for regular crop, regular length, tall crop and tall regular. Version 1 is a traditional straight leg jean, Version 2 is a skinny jean (my favorite!), Version 3 is a flare leg and Version 4 is a wide leg jean.
I can’t rave enough about this pattern – I found the instructions to be incredible. I think a confident beginner could easily take on this pattern as there is not a step that is missed in the instructions. The construction is a little different than the construction for the Ginger Jeans but for me it was a bit more intuitive. Actually, when I went to write this post, I realized I didn’t use the seam ripper once to rip out a “construction” mistake. I used it for other things but not for a mistake in the construction.
The only thing that that I didn’t love was the waistband. The waistband is cut parallel to the grainline with no interfacing instead of perpendicular (i.e. not in the direction of greatest stretch). While this creates a really tight waistband (and a no-gap waistband), my waistband doesn’t have a lot of give which isn’t my favorite. I prefer my waistband to have some give. I might try on my next pair to cut it the opposite way and interface one of the waistband pieces.
I chose a neutral top stitching thread because I tend to wear my jeans to work and wanted them to be a little bit more “dressy” and find that a navy topstitching thread does that for me.
I was most surprised by the fact that I didn’t need to take off lots of length. I am 5’4 and have very short legs but using the regular cut line, I only needed to take an inch off the length.
The Fabric
I think 50% or more of the equation for the perfect handmade jeans is in the fabric. D&H Fabrics Company posted about a new jeggings fabric that she was carrying and oh my gosh – I don’t think I’ll make jeans out of any other fabric ever again. In fact, I ordered 5 more yards of it last week!
The fabric has about 30% stretch so I decided to size down on my Ash Jeans. My measurements put me at around a size 29 but I chose to make a size 28. I think that might have exacerbated my tight waistband problem so in the future I might also try just grading out to a 29 at the waist.
This fabric mimics everything I love in my ready to wear jeans (which by the way, these are my FAVORITE ready to wear jeans that I can’t recommend enough). It has really great recovery and is so comfy to wear. If you are a jeggings fan like me, I can’t recommend it enough.
Have you tried the Ash Jeans pattern?
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