How to Sew a Pair of Chic DIY Trousers

Tools and materials:

• Pattern
• Fabric
• Interfacing
• Iron
• Scissors
• Pins
• Seam ripper
• Buttons
• Zipper
• Measuring tape
• Sewing machine
• Serger

Prepare pattern pieces

To see how I prepared all the pattern pieces before construction, see the video from 0:36-2:24.

Iron

To begin construction on these basic DIY trousers, I folded the fly facing and pressed it to the wrong side of the pants.

Sew and press

Then I sewed the narrow end of the fly shield down and pressed it flat.

Attach the zipper

I pinned the zipper to the fly shield and then sewed it to the front of the pants. 

Sew

Once the zipper was attached, I sewed the two front leg pieces together and sewed down the darts on the front of the pants.

Sew pockets and darts

Then I pinned and sewed the pocket pieces to the front leg pieces, sewed down the darts, and pressed the seams flat.

Sew in back pockets

The back pockets are well pockets, which I had never made before. They are supposed to have a little flap on the outside, but I screwed it up and ended up with just a hole. It didn’t end up looking too bad, but I definitely should have read the directions before doing this. At this point, I also made buttonholes and attached buttons in the center of the opening to each back pocket.

Serge

Next, I serged the side edges of the back leg pieces of the pants. 

Sew

Then I sewed the legs together at the side seams for the front and back.

Pin and sew

I pinned the crotch curve from the back center all the way up to where the zipper ends and sewed it down.

Make belt loops

Next, I made belt loops by sewing a narrow strip of fabric and cutting it into smaller strips of equal length.

Pin and sew

Then I pinned and basted the belt loops into place around the waistline.

Attach waistband

I attached the waistband to the top edge of the pants. Here, I made a little mistake, as well. I somehow miscalculated the length and had to leave off an extra little flap that was supposed to be in the front of the pants. So I just put in a regular button closure, and it turned out fine. 

Finish belt loops and hem

Once the waistband was in place, I was able to connect the top edges of the belt loops. I also hemmed the bottom of the pants with an invisible stitch that I hand-stitched in. 

Here are the completed trousers. There’s a lot of advice on the Just Patterns website on how to avoid all the mistakes I made, so if you plan to make DIY trousers like these, I highly recommend checking that out first. 

What do you think of this pattern? How would you style these trousers?