Dungarees is a funny word

Originally completed March 2019, some minor revisions since.

It's the overalls post! My favorite article of clothing, self-made or bought off the rack. Admittedly they're pretty plain in a solid black denim twill and visually, little else, but their strength is versatility in being so low-key. They're black jeans with a bib! They'll be in style forever! (?????)

There's a lot I like about my dung'ees, and this is going to be a long post.

I took inspiration from this post from Tilly and the Buttons about their own dungarees pattern, Mila. I especially loved the pin buckle-and-grommet design element in their first example. I have a huge weakness for cool hardware so I went even bigger with my chunky, glossy, gunmetal buckles and matching 8mm diameter grommets. Because I didn't vibe with the fitted, skinny jean-like examples, I decided to make my overalls with a straight leg and in a rigid, no-stretch material. These design choices made me run into some problems, more on that soon.

On executing the fit: I fitted the pants portion surprisingly well considering I traced the pattern from some pants that didn't fit like jeans, and also because I hadn't made pants prior. From the very first try-on, I only added darts to reduce the waist. I intended for the waist to fit a little looser than my actual waist, so that allowed me to be less precise. The butt and crotch were perfect. I was thrilled to have a working pants pattern I could reuse in the future and I rode that high for the rest of the project.

There are a lot of little details that seem minor, but I'm fond of them. I got to do a lot of therapeutic topstitching for five (5!!!) roomy pockets and for every finished edge, for which I used self-made bias tape. (My poor housemate was so confused as to why I seemed to be painstakingly ironing a never-ending strip of fabric). All internal raw edges were Hong Kong finished with more of that bias tape/binding. If I were to do it again I'd probably flat-fell the seams for added strength + an excuse to do even more topstitching.

Topstitching, seams, and finished edges.

Alright, now I'm going to talk about why the perfect fit turned out to be a detriment. A perfectly fitting pair of pants stops being perfectly fitting when you add a bodice component, the bib my case. When you turn your pants into a jumpsuit you must consider dropping the crotch one or two inches because when you sit down, the bodice will pull upwards on your pants and they will ride up, uncomfortably. This is especially crucial when working with a material that has zero stretch. I learned this the hard way after I had already finished the whole garment.

On a normal pair of overalls, made with a slider buckle, I would be able to adjust the straps to whatever extra length I needed to fix the crotch situation, but my choice to use grommets meant the straps could only be adjusted to certain intervals. The "correct" length at the middle-est grommet only worked for when I was standing up. When I lengthened the straps to drop the crotch, the fit was decent but I didn't like how low the bib sat on my chest.

Eventually I unpicked the bib and stuck a waistband in to both increase the rise of the bib and to lower the crotch. Honestly I was kinda bummed about it because I deliberately designed the overalls to not have a waistband. It bothered me to have a design element that didn't have a specific purpose. Yes, the waistband has the important role of rectifying my fitting issue, but it doesn't serve the purpose of a waistband, which is to secure the garment around the waist, and the overalls were made to fit loosely around my own. A weird thing to be annoyed by, I know. I had to concede that it was a necessary addition after I sat down in my overalls for an hour and noticed my shoulders were sore from hunching over slightly in the too-short bodice. Ah, sacrifices.

I've run out of ideas on how to conclude this scalable wall of text about some PANTS so now I'm going to bask in this sense of accomplishment. I have some drafting notes for the future but I can't remember what they are off the top of my head. Too busy prancing in my vessel o' pockets.