Burda Style For people who sew

My trousers pattern instructs me to sew the crotch seam and then to sew up the inside leg seams; I want to do the leg seams as flat-felled seams (for strength, and because I only have a straight-stitch machine). When visualising this, it seems to me that I would need to do the flat-felled seams first (one pressed to either direction, so as to make less of a lump at the groin?) and then sew up the crotch over them afterwards.

How important is the order of operations at this point – and what would be a good finish for the crotch seam?

Jun 18, 2012, 04.08 PM by harrietbazley

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  Jun 18, 2012, 10.00 PMby TailorFairy

  you can sew the leg seams before the crotch seam, it only makes it more difficult if you want to sew a zipper in. But you cant sew both leg seams, inside leg seam and side seams, as flat-felled seams, because if the leg is finished you dont have room to operate and sew the part from the right side. So you have to decide before which seam you wanna do with this method. So you can do a flat-felled seam there before you close the other seam and the crotch seam.

  If you only have a straight-stitch machine and a fabric that frays you could use bias binding to cover up the edges of the other seams inside, I had pants that were done like that and nice to wear.

  Sorry to make it more difficult, maybe somebody else has a great idea?

  all the best wishes

  tailorfairy
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  Jun 19, 2012, 07.16 AMby harrietbazley

  Yes, I was just wondering how you do both sides of the leg…

  According to http://sewing.patternreview.com/cgi-bin/sewingclasses/board.pl?t=31921 it’s apparently possible via “extreme scrunching up of the pant leg”?
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  Jun 19, 2012, 08.15 AMby harrietbazley

  Other people seem to be suggesting using a French seam on one side of the leg and a flat-felled seam on the other; I can visualise problems when I get to the folded-back seam allowance on the front pockets either way….

  Ah, here are photos
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  Jun 19, 2012, 08.37 AMby katexxxxxx

  It’s very hard to do BOTH leg seams (inside and outside on both sides of the leg) as felled seams. Not impossible, just very hard. I usually do the outside leg as the felled one, and fell the crotch seam in two halves (do the fly zip after felling the bottom half of the front seam, then fell the back seam). The inside leg seam is the last one I do, and I neaten the raw edges after sewing it with either the serger/overlocker, or by binding the two edges together with seam binding tape. The other thing you can do to make a neat finish is a French seam, though that doesn’t sit so flat.
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  Aug 11, 2012, 12.32 PMby harrietbazley

  I followed Kate’s advice and did felled seams on the outside leg and crotch and French seams on the final inside leg – looks very smart and is comfortable to wear!