McCall's 7670 (1981): Denim Pants with Buttoned Cuffs, Slouchy Top and Silver Stretch Belt

In my last post, I tried to set up a “cliffhanger” involving McCall’s 7670:  I own this pattern from 1981, I’m fondly remembering Jean’s green knickers from 1984, and I’m willing to seriously entertain any fashion trend prior to 1989.   

Would this unique set of circumstances result in me sewing and wearing knickers in 2019?  

The answer to this question turned out to be No.  

I also took a pass on the jodhpurs, and settled on View B, which are the long pants with buttoned cuffs.

I had some really nice denim from Mood Fabrics that I was originally going to use for my white strapless jumpsuit.  I thought this would be perfect for my new puffy cuffed pants.

Putting these pants together was relatively painless.  I felt confident of the fit because of what I learned from the practice shorts I made in my last post.  The length of these pants as noted on the pattern envelope is 42 ¼ inches. The length did seem excessive, even if they were supposed to have blousing at the bottoms.

But, since I usually end up adding length to almost every pants pattern I make, I didn’t consider shortening the pants.  I would just see how they turned out.

They were, in fact, a bit long for my taste.  There was just too much fabric floating around my shins and ankles.  I ended up trimming about 2 inches off the bottoms after basting one cuff on and seeing how it looked. 

After they were done, I started to experiment with styling.  While making these pants, I envisioned them with a pair of vintage leather pumps, a white blouse and a tweed blazer.  Once the pants were made and on my body though, these pieces didn’t look right.

I had a slouchy top I had made a few years ago from Butterick 5753 (released in 2012).  

Before I made it,  I had stumbled on a review of this pattern on the excellent website, Pattern Review (such a great resource if you are shopping for current patterns!).  Diane from Blue Dot Patterns (if you are interested, you should really read her full review at Blue Dot Patterns where you can shop her wonderful original patterns and read her blog!) made this top in black with a center panel of pink and black stripes. It was SO 1980s and I loved it! It inspired me to copy her.  My shirt does have a striped center panel also, but the color palette isn’t as 80s as hers is.  

image of Diane in her Butterick 5753 appears here with her permission.  Thank you!

While cruising on Etsy several months ago, I stumbled on an Omega brand silver stretch belt at this shop.  I immediately got a flashback to my sister’s bedroom in the 1980s. I had a mental image of a belt just like this one amongst her things (in addition to her bermuda bag with wooden handles and the button-on cloth covers!)

I happened to have some green suede booties that matched the top, and voila--I had a new 80s casual outfit!

I love the silver stretch belt.  I omitted the belt loops the pattern called for (I was being lazy) and I was kicking myself when I realized I really WANTED to wear this belt with this outfit!  Luckily, the belt seems to stay where it should and I think it looks good where it is.

this back view shows the interesting notch finish on the right arm...

The other arm has a more standard finish

The cuffs are a bit on the tight side, and it is a minor struggle to get them buttoned.  I don’t think I made a construction error; perhaps my ankles are bigger than they were in the 80s.  I had my husband take a picture of how the cuffs look unbuttoned, and I think it looks OK. Which is good because I can see myself forgoing the buttons as I rush to get out the door in the morning!

Buttoned

Unbuttoned

My new pants are very comfy.  I like them buttoned and unbuttoned.  All in all, I’m glad I skipped the knickers and added these to my wardrobe instead!

Knock, Knock, it's Knickers: Revisiting 1980s Equestrian Chic

These co-eds are so fresh-faced, it’s as though not only their bodies but their actual souls have been washed clean with Ivory soap.

McCall’s 7670 contains knickers, jodhpurs and long pants patterns.  

pattern copyright 1981

Knickers had a major moment back in the 1980s.  My friend Jean owed a pair in green wide wale corduroy which I can still conjure in my mind to this day.   She wore them with argyle socks. We didn’t know it at the time, but Jean was channelling some 1920s golfer fashion:

Of all the trends in the 80s, knickers was kind of a weird one.  Knickers came fast on the heels of gauchos, which seemed to be more of a 70s thing:

Similar to culottes, gauchos are a lot like skirts but with the convenience and coverage of pants.  Knickers are a lot like pants, but end at your knees with buttoned cuffs. They remind me of Jean circa 1984 or cast members from the Broadway musical, “Newsies”

original photo taken by George Lucozzi

Perfect for hawking papers on street corners or a jaunty pony-ride, knickers seem best suited to younger folk.   Yet, knickers DID take off and there WERE brave souls over the age of consent who sported knickers in the 80s:

(both images from May/June 1982 Vogue Patterns magazine)

Yes, tight-fitting or blousey, knickers had their day.  But could a new day dawn for these spry little trousers?  Could I--SHOULD I--sew and wear knickers? Would I WANT to wear knickers?  Am I ready for the (real and/or imagined) pitying glances? Or would I set the fashion world on fire by creatively reviving a long, twice (or more) dead trend?  After all, 3 people follow my blog, plus my mom.  

How about going way out on a limb and making the jodphurs?  What forty-something woman DOESN’T want her pants to billow out at the hips and then come in real tight at the knees?   Hey, I wasn’t a “horsey” kind of girl (never once crossed my mind to ask my parents for a pony) but it’s never too late to dabble in equestrian chic.  Is it?

more from 1982 vogue patterns mag

Jodhpurs and knickers were originally functional garments meant for sports and horseback riding.  And stirrup pants! Like their name implies, stirrup pants were originally designed so that your pants wouldn’t bunch up when slipping into your riding boots.  The zeitgeist of the 80s quickly absorbed and appropriated all of this horsey apparell and soon horses had nothing to do with them:

So I decided:  I was going to make SOMETHING out of McCall’s 7670.  But first, I wanted to make sure they fit comfortably.  

I have noticed that these 1980s patterns in size 12 seem to fit me quite well.  However, I did notice that my last pair of 80s pants JUST fit. They are comfortable but I wanted a bit more ease in my next pair.

Ease, or pattern ease, is a BIG topic of discussion (and frustration) in the online sewing world.  Of course, if your waist is 27 inches you don’t want the waist of your pants to be EXACTLY 27 inches around.  You need a bit more fabric there so you can move about comfortably.

Currently the “Big 4” pattern companies (Vogue, Butterick, McCall’s and Simplicity) generally add a huge amount of “ease” in their patterns. (As is the way of most things these days, these companies have merged and are now all owned by the same parent company.)  You may innocently purchase a pattern, cut out your size according to your measurements and then be swimming in your new clothes.  

This "Open Letter to Vogue" from the blog Communing with Fabric expounds on this frustration, plus laments for the days when Vogue released many more interesting patterns for the home sewist.  Like many, this blogger has a long history with Vogue and she has seen some unwelcome changes in their patterns. It’s a very good read!

It seems to me that my vintage 80s patterns are just better drafted than many patterns made today.  And the ease included is NOT ridiculous. This has made sewing from these patterns even more enjoyable.  My measurements are basically a size 12 (give or take) and the 1980s size 12 FITS. Wow, what a concept!

Still, I wanted just a little more room at the waist than my last pair of 80s pants had. So I watched this video to learn how to enlarge the waist on a commercial pattern.  It was pretty easy.  

I added a 1 ½ to this waist of this pattern and sewed up a pair of shorts out of a small piece of corduroy I knew I wouldn’t use (it’s a lint magnet).  Turns out that they were too big...by 1 ½ inches.  

So what I learned is that 1980s Vogue pants patterns fit OK and could use a little more ease, and 1980s McCalls patterns fit me great.  I should have intuited this from my prior makes with 1980s McCall’s patterns.  The pants on my white strapless jumpsuit fit like a dream.   

So what will it be?  Knickers? Jodhpurs? Pants with strange puffy bottoms?

What will become of me and McCall’s 7670?

Well, I actually have finished this project and all that remains is for me to corrall (ha) my husband and make him take pictures.

Tune in later this week to see!

McCall's 6988 (1980): Stephen Sprouse Inspired Camouflage Jumpsuit

Last spring, I encountered this stretch cotton sateen at Mood Fabrics in NYC.  It immediately brought to mind fashion designer Stephen Sprouse, who transformed the fashion world in the 1980s.   I happily purchased several yards in both colorways:

Stephen Sprouse was born in Dayton, Ohio in 1953 to Norbert and Joanne Sprouse.  When he was 2, the family moved to Indiana. It isn’t a stretch to say he was a born fashion designer.  As a young child, his fashion sketches showed such talent that his parents wondered if they had a prodigy on their hands (at age 14 he did a summer internship in NYC with Bill Blass).   

Stephen attended the Rhode Island School of Design briefly in the early 1970s.  But he dropped out after securing a job with Halston in New York City, the reigning king of fashion at the time.

After working for Halston for a few years,  Stephen struck out on his own. During the late 70s and early 80s, he formed intense friendships with up and coming artists, designers, models and musicians in the burgeoning NYC punk rock music scene.  Debbie Harry of Blondie was a particularly close friend, and he loved to dress her for shows.  

In 1982 he was part of a show of emerging designers, put on to promote the launch of Polaroid’s SX-70 camera.  His transformative and innovative mini collection reflected elements that would become his trademarks: Day-Glo colors, 1960s inspired silhouettes, graffiti printed on luxurious, high end fabrics and the “energy of the streets.”   He went on to release collections throughout the mid-80s.

In the late 1980s his friend Andy Warhol allowed Stephen to incorporate imagery from Andy’s “Camouflage” series of paintings into his clothing line.  These pieces fetched high prices and are still coveted today.

Throughout the 1990s,  Sprouse’s downtown, “underground” pop art/punk style was always in demand by those in high-end fashion circles.  In 2001, he collaborated with Marc Jacobs to produce a line which included the famous graffitted and “defaced” Louis Vuitton bags (a perfect nod to the admixture of  refined uptown sensibility and the gritty downtown look).  

In 2002, he released an affordable clothing line at Target called “Americaland”, featuring his signature grafitti “street” style done in a palette consisting mainly of red, white and blue.  

(As it so happens Target is releasing a 20 year retrospective of collections created by some big-name designers over the years, including Stephen Sprouse, Marimekko and Isaac Mizrahi!)

So you can see why I was excited to find this fabric.  It is NOT described by Mood as a “Stephen Sprouse” inspired design.  But the melding of graffiti and camouflage surely brings this 1980s fashion genius to mind.

I decided to use this 1980 jumpsuit pattern and the fabric in the brown and blue spruce colorway.  It’s not exactly a utilitarian design, but I hoped the zip front would blend well with the camo:

I encountered no real issues in the creation of this jumpsuit.  I did take care with pattern matching, ensuring that the design flowed at the center and yoke seams (this required that I recut and replace the yokes when I saw that the design repeated too closely).

This is my first piece of camouflage clothing (when you are looking for it, you see it on people everywhere!).  I felt surprisingly comfortable in camo, and very on trend!

from Forever 21

Here is my jumpsuit.  It is very comfortable, looks good in heels and sandals and I love the front zip!

I tried pairing it with this vintage 80s white belt (I prefer it without a belt):

The pattern called for wide bias tape to make the casing for the elastic, but I just used a strip of fabric:

In the year or so before his death, Stephen was in treatment for lung cancer,  but had kept this very serious diagnosis largely private. It was therefore a shock to many when Stephen Sprouse died of heart failure on March 4, 2004.

The Stephen Sprouse Book, by Roger Padilha and Mauricio Padilha and published by Rizzoli, has plenty of photographs of clothing from his runway shows and other clothing lines, and some of those can be found on the website thestephensprousebook.com.   This book, as well as Stephen Sprouse: Xerox/Rock/Art were my main sources in writing this post.   

These are wonderful volumes on the life and work of a great American fashion designer, Stephen Sprouse, whose influence is still felt to this day.

Polaroid of Stephen Sprouse taken by Andy Warhol in 1984