Friday Pattern Company Miller trousers review

Mar 18

Mar 18 Friday Pattern Company Miller Trousers

Today we have some staple wardrobe item sewing, not exciting but extremely useful. My oldest pair bob pants are a drill fabric, they have work through in the inner thighs, crotch area, I've fixed it but I don't think they'll survive another repair. So I've been keeping an eye out for drill fabric in the Minerva Makers selection for a long time, when this was included I jumped on it straight away

When I was a teenager I had this pair of grey drill trousers from H&M I wore all the time. My husband described them as 'school uniform type trousers' at the time, which didn't mean anything to me as an 18 year old (no school uniform in Luxembourg where I'm from) but I now know to be nonsense. Not Teflon school uniform material, more like construction worker trousers if anything. Anyway, I bloody loved these trousers and I was so excited to make something in this fabric to approximate them.

The fabric is great, feels very substantial but slightly lighter than expected, since it’s labelled heavy on the Minerva website. It’s lighter weight than the drill from my bobs. It's definitely not drapey, but I think it will soften up over time.

I originally thought I'd make some more bobs, but decided at the last minute to switch to the Friday Pattern Company Millers, which I've had printed out for absolute ages. Slowly working my way through all my printed patterns!

They have a draw string option, but I decided to go for the elasticated version. I am pro elasticated waist!

I was originally a bit apprehensive about the waistband not being its own piece, but built into the leg pieces, but actually it works really well. The pattern is surprisingly complicated, with pleats in the front, and darts at the back and some slightly head scratchy pocket bag pieces. The instructions are great.

I added a two inch full seat adjustment, like I always do, no other changes. It turns out the rise is very long, to get it to sit right the trousers have to sit on the high waist. It looks good when they do but I'm not convinced they'll stay that high for very long.

I've concluded I need to either shorten the rise, or add more length at the back. I'm pretty sure it's the back that pulls it down, as I do have a very big bum! I'll figure out how to do one of these things next time, but for now these are perfectly usable. I think you can go a bit crazy with overthinking trouser fitting, especially with an elasticated waist, everything is never going to sit in place perfectly at all times