Pressing Your Pants
To some, pressing pants is as frustrating as a wrestling match with an octopus. To others, it is a simple business involving nothing more mysterious than straight lines. Neither is the case.
You will discover it is easy to set the creases in the Fronts before you have sewn a single seam! With the pants in this completely raw state, there are no distractions from either the crotch or back. Simply fold a front precisely on its crease line (which, of course you dutifully marked with tailor's tacks in the cutting stage), making certain that the fold points squarely to the dart. As you press, remember that the crease stops just below the waist dart. Later, you will see that a previously set front crease is a handy guide when setting the back crease.
Setting a Crease
Is not a matter of making a few desultory passes with a steam iron -- not if you would like a lasting and professional crease.The tools of the trade are few and simple. Your ironing board should have firm padding and not too much of it. Thick, soft padding may sound luxurious, but it will offer no resistance to your iron; a hard surface is essential to a knife-sharp crease. A steam iron is the most practical way of providing moisture, but on some fabrics it will raise a shine, so add a pressing cloth to your list. A striker is also needed. It is a wooden instrument shaped somewhat like an iron and is used to strike or pound the steam into the fabric. If you don't own one, can't find one, or merely decline to make the purchase, you can use the bottom of your sleeve board with adequate results.
With these tools at hand, lay out the fronts on the board with the fold on the crease line and pointing to the waist dart. Apply steam. Now, with the striker, pound the steam into the fabric until all the moisture ha bee absorbed.
Hold that iron! Before you step back to admire your handiwork and congratulate yourself on creases so straight that they made an arrow look like a wiggle-worm, think a minute. Are your legs as straight as that? Not if you walk around on them. You have a gentle swell to the calf muscle which is functionally necessary and cosmetically nice. Therefore, when you slip a leg into those arrow-straight pants, the symmetry will be disturbed by that rounded calf. The fronts will be pulled toward the rear and their hems laid smack up against your shins as if you were standing in a gale. As the pants pull backwards to accommodate the shape of the calf, there is a fringe benefit in the form of baggy knees. All the precision of your careful crease will be gone! And what can be done about it?
The cure for shin-plastered pants and baggy knees is part of the pressing technique. After you have set the creases in the above manner, keep the pants on the ironing board. Starting about 3-inches above the knee-line, stretch the side and inner leg seams of the fronts, stopping about 3-inches from the hem. See Figure 42. As you stretch the two seams together, swing them forward until you have created a concave curve in the front crease. The method is demonstrated in Figure 43. Continue stretching until you have added from 1/4-inch to no more than 1/2-inch in length, the amount depending on the give inherent in your fabric. When you have stretched the proper fraction of an inch, trim a corresponding amount off the front hems, the same amount all the way across. In other words, if you stretched 1/2-inch, remove 1/2-inch evenly from the front hems. See Figure 42, broken line.
When you stitch the fronts and backs together along this stretched seam, the shape will hold. The slight concave curve of the crease will forestall the tendency to baggy knees, for it moves out away from your shins, distributing the hem width evenly, front and back.
Fabrics with give (especially stretch fabrics) need not be stretched in advance by pressing, but can be stretched directly at the machine. This is done when seams are joined and front seam is stretched to meet the longer back seam.
What about baggy knees in finished pants? The same procedure will work in this case, too. Rip the side seams to 3-inches above the knee-line. Stretch the inner and outer side seams of front only. When you have gained 1/2-inch, you will see that you have achieved the typical concave curve in the the crease line. Remove a like amount evenly all the way across the front hems. Sew up the seams again and bid adieu to bags at the knees!
These things accomplished, your initial pressing chores are at an end. Press your seams as you go, paying special attention to the crotch curve. Remember this in this case, you press the front and back seams open from the waist down to the notches, but below that through the crotch curve you do not press the seams open at all. You will find further information when you return to the Sewing Instructions.
When the pants are finished, set the back creases with the striker, just as you did in front. Use the previously set front creases as a guide in laying out the pants. Back creases stop at crotch length. There! They look almost too impeccable to put on!
Don't Hang Those Pants!
Yes, of course, you were taught as a very small child to always say "please" and "thank you" and to always hang up your clothes. Quite commendable. But when you have just finished pressing a pair of pants, lay them on a flat surface for a period of time to all the fabric to dry out thoroughly. All your preciously won concave curves may hang right out if you hang them up too soon! This procedure should be followed both with your unfinished front pieces and with the freshly laundered finished pants.
Conclusion
Now we have come to the end of a perfect way. The ghosts of ancient pants problems have been laid to rest. No longer can the specters of men's alterations haunt the tailoring of women's pants.
In this series, you have found a concept of fit designed from its inception for women. Its impact will sweep the last vestige of cobwebs from your pants construction, and put you in the vanguard of an army of faultless fitted women in pants.
Now that pants have been made for women, it is triumphantly clear that woman were made for pants!
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