Gathers: The Brya Pants

If you've chosen to make the Brya pants, a couple of the more complicated aspects of that pattern are putting in the pockets, which of course are a must, and gathering in the top portion of the pants to fit on the waistband. So Nicki LaFoille has done an amazing tutorial, step-by-step on how to do scoop pockets, so you can watch that one next if you're having an issue getting those pockets in place on your Brya pants. But I want to talk about how to gather in the fabric to make it work with your waistband. So I have just some sample pieces here so I can show you how to do a gather stitch and how to pull on that and make sure that everything stays as even and as aligned as possible, so you don't have areas of your pants that have too much gather in one area or are too flat in another area. So what you will notice if you are using the Jersey fabric or a stretch fabric, is that there's a lot of roll and a lot of not laying flat of your fabric.

So you can see here, this is my waistband piece that I have cut and it doesn't matter how much I try to make it lay flat, as soon as I let go, it rolls up on itself. So that's something that you're going to have to sort of deal with when you're working with these fabrics if you're not familiar with them, and that's fine if they roll while they're sitting and you're not working with them. Just make sure that as you are stitching, everything is laying as flat as possible as it goes underneath your presser foot when you are doing your initial stitching. So when you are gathering your pants to go onto your waistband, you're going to need to run a basting stitch. A basting stitch is just a regular straight stitch, but it is at the longest possible stitch length that you can do.

So for my machine, that is a 6.0 millimeter. If yours is a stitches per inch, I'm not sure exactly what that would be, but just put it up as high as it will possibly go. For this pattern, as for most of the patterns and assembly of these projects, they're done on half inch seam allowances. So half inch is what we want to be putting our pieces together with, which means we want our basting stitches to not be that far in, because if you, for one, don't want to remove your basting stitches, you need them to be hidden, but you also just want that to be within your seam line. So for me, since I know we're going to be constructing on half-inch seam allowances, I did my basting at one quarter inch.

So I went ahead and put a quarter inch foot on my machine, just to help remind me that I want to be at that quarter inch, and I have my machine, again, at the longest possible stitch length. If you are someone who has a machine that has an automatic thread cutter, like this one does, and you know that you've used that last, then you may only have an inch or so of thread that's out off of your needle, and you're definitely gonna want to pull more thread out because you need long thread tails to start your basting. Also, if you, again, use the automatic thread cutter or maybe you've just inserted a bobbin and you don't have that thread pulled up, that bobbin thread, it's a good idea to just run a couple stitches, just somewhere on a scrap piece of fabric, or you can even do it sort of in the seam line of the fabric that you're using, just to be able to pull out those bobbin threads as well. Then you can go ahead and cut it and remove it from your project, but now you have both the needle and bobbin thread, and pull it out to where you have a good six to eight inch long tail. I'm gonna go ahead and just remove those little stitches that I just did, just to pull up my bobbin thread up.

Now, once you have a long tail and your bobbin thread up, now you're going to run that line of basting stitches. Now, again, this would be around the top of your pants or the way I did it is I actually wanted to gather the front of my pants and the back of my pants separately, that way there was just less pull on that thread. So pretend that this is the front or the back of your pants. So I'm going to put this, again, underneath my presser foot, I have my quarter inch foot on, and I'm just going to stitch. Now again, the fabric is wanting to roll as I'm stitching, so it doesn't really matter what's happening with the rest of your fabric, just make sure that what's going underneath your presser foot stays as flat as possible.

Go ahead and just run your line of basting stitches all the way along the edge of your fabric. Again, about a quarter of an inch away from the edge. Now, when you are done, again, if you're someone who uses your automatics thread cutter, don't immediately hit that button. You want to raise your needle, raise your presser foot, pull this off of your machine, and give yourself a good six to eight inches along the other side as well. That way you have plenty of thread on both sides to be able to pull and gather your fabric.

Now you can either stop with one line of basting stitches or you can do a second one. If you've done gathers before and done this technique and haven't had any issues with your thread breaking and you feel comfortable with one line of stitching, just go ahead and go with that. If you are afraid that your thread is going to break or you've ever had any issues with whatever thread you're using breaking, go ahead and run a second line of basting stitches exactly the same way, leaving your thread tails on both ends, but go about three eights of an inch in, just go a little bit over. That way, you have this sort of second line of stitching that's a backup in case your thread breaks on your first one. I'm gonna grab my pins here, 'cause I do want to have these, but when you have your basting done, you've done your stitching, now you need to do some markings.

Now this is sort of an optional marking, but something that I find is really helpful in evenly distributing those gathers on your waistband or whatever other project you may be wanting to put some gathers on, and you can use sort of the markings that are on your pants already, meaning you have seams on the sides of your pants from front and back, you have seams on the side of your waistband front and back. There is a center front and center back seam on your pants but there isn't on your waistband. So if this is your waistband, you wanna find that center front and center back. You can either do that by measuring or you can simply fold it in half, go ahead and align the raw edges, and then just mark your center. Just marking it, again, with your preferred marking method.

For me, that's a pin. That way, I know it's gonna come out, but I'm just going to put a pin right there in the center, and now I know that's the center of my waistband. Again, on your pants, you'll have a center front seam or a center back seam, but I need to mark my center here on my sample, so I'm gonna put in another pin. And now I have multiple areas where I know that I need to line up those areas. So I have my sides, I have the center front, I have the center back, and now I have an area where I know only maybe six inches or eight inches of fabric need to be gathered to this one area, meaning one half of the front or half of the back, versus trying to just figure out where all of those gathers need to go throughout the entire top of the pants.

So now I'm going to take, and I am going to go ahead, and I like to pin my centers and my sides and pin all of my marks together before I do any kind of gathering. So I would just put my fabric, right sides together. I am going to pin the top of my pants to the waistband at the center first, and then I'm gonna go ahead and pin it at the ends as well. And this is just gonna help keep everything that I've marked associated with where it's supposed to be lined up with with its marks. And now I can easily see, "All right, this is how much fabric needs to be pulled "or gathered in to fit on this waistband." Do the same thing over here on this side.

Again, just pinning it. We got right sides together, aligning those raw edges, putting in a pin, and now it's time to actually gather. So we have our long thread tails that we have left and you just want to grab one or the other. Now sometimes, the needle thread pulls easier than the bobbin thread, sometimes the bobbin thread pulls easier. It might be different every time you do it.

So find whichever one pulls the easiest and you're just going to lightly start pulling on that thread and gathering in that fabric. Now what you want to make sure is that, again, you're not pulling too hard because if you haven't done that second line of stitching and you have no sort of backup and you break your thread, you're gonna have to take everything off, take all your pin marks out and go and restitch, so make sure you're pulling gently. Another reason to pull gently is that you have done your basting stitch from one side to the other, and there's nothing to secure it anywhere. So if you just pull really really really hard, you might pull your thread all the way out from the other side. So you want to just be pulling gently and gathering in the larger piece of fabric until, I like to do it until it is just a tiny bit smaller or shorter than you actually need it to be.

So right here, you can see that now I don't have this big loop of fabric, I have it nice and almost the same size as my actual waistband. I like to make it a little bit smaller, that way I can sort of use my fingers and come in and make sure everything looks as even as possible in terms of the gathers before I pin it onto the waistband. So just redistribute any areas that look a little fuller than others, and now you can come in and actually pin all of your gathered pants, your front or your back, whichever section you're working on first, you can pin all of those gathers to your waistband. So I'm gonna pin here a couple more. And again, if you feel like there's any area where there's not enough gather or there's too much gather in one area compared to another, before you stitch your actual waistband to your pants, you can still take your pins out and make even more adjustments, but get those pinned in on one side and now we can come over and work on the other side.

So same thing, I'm gonna grab Whichever one I feel like is going to pull the easiest, and you can try both and see which one works best, but once you've found it, then go ahead and just gently pull and gather in this side of the fabric, again, until it's just a tad bit smaller than the area you're trying to fit it into, that way you can make those adjustments if needed. And make sure you're not bringing gathers all the way to the center. So even though we have this pin mark at the very very center, you want to make sure you're pushing those gathers all the way up to that center mark. That way, you don't have a flat area in the middle front and middle back. So once you've gathered that in enough, again, redistribute it evenly, and then you can go ahead and pin your pants to your waistband.

So you're gonna have the gathers that you have to deal with and you have the fabric that wants to roll in on itself, you're dealing with that as well, so there's kind of a lot to be working with with this fabric, but once you get everything pinned, it should be fairly easy to stitch and then it's going to look very, very nice when it's done because your gathers are going to be even. So, again, make sure that your pieces are gonna fit together, that one is gathered in to be the same size as the other. Put those pins in, and then you're ready to stitch. Definitely cannot have too many pins when you are holding all of your gathers together. You want to make sure that nothing moves that you don't want it to when you are stitching.

So now that you have everything pinned, I like to flip it over and look at all of my gathers at the same time and look to see if there's any areas that don't look as gathered as others or vice versa, areas that look too gathered. Make sure it looks as even as possible, and once you're at that point, now you're ready to stitch. So before you just immediately take it back over to your machine and stitch, make sure you take it off of that basting stitch. You want to put it back to a construction stitch link, so either a 2.5 or 2.0, whichever you prefer to use, and now you are ready to sew your gathers in place. I like to sew with my gathers on top, that way I can see them and I can make sure that everything lays the way I want it to while I'm stitching.

So I'm gonna go ahead and let my machine do some securing stitches, or you can do a back tack, and I like to always have my needle down, engaged. That way, when I'm stitching, I can stop to take out my pins, I can stop to make adjustments and my needle down is going to hold that fabric. So when you're stitching over your gathers, you're gonna be essentially stitching these pleats or stitching these puckers into your fabric, which sometimes is hard to do 'cause you're used to your fabric laying flat when you're stitching over it, but just know that you're gonna be stitching those gathers in, and while you want to be stitching over those pleats and ruffles right under your presser foot, just make sure the rest of your fabric is nice and sort of straight, out and away. That will help make sure that your ruffles lay, or gathers, lay perfectly perpendicular to your waistband. So if this is your waistband here, as long as your fabric is straight and away, then your ruffles are gonna go straight down, otherwise you might have some that sort of get in there angled, and if that's the look you want, go ahead and do that.

Otherwise, just make sure they're laying straight down and go ahead and stitch. I'm gonna pull my pins out as I stitch up to them, and I started too close to the edge of my fabric, so I just got a little bit caught up on my presser foot, so I'm going to go ahead and adjust that there. And that might happen, this is a very slinky fabric. So if you're having an issue where your fabric gets pushed down into your throat plate, just start a couple stitches in from the edge and you should find that you don't have that issue anymore, so that's just a very quick and easy fix there. But just go ahead and stitch, again, using your construction stitch length and your one half inch seam allowance.

I do want to also mention that, again, this is an area you're attaching your waistband to your pants, so you want to be using your stretch stitch, your 100% polyester thread or your all-purpose thread that has some polyester that has some stretch. You could also be using a serger if you wanted to for this area, and again, you're using either your stretch, your Jersey or your ballpoint needles because we are using that stretch fabric. So some of those tips that I mentioned in the very beginning video, I want to make sure that I still sort of reiterate those here, so you know what stitches to be using for your fabric. Now, if you want to do a little sample like this and you want to just practice doing some gathers, you want to practice stitching over those gathers so you know what it's going to look like, then it doesn't necessarily matter what stitch you're using because it is just a sample piece, but know, for your garment, that you do want to be using those stretch stitches, zigzag stitches. That way, you can actually put your pants on and you don't have to worry about your stitches popping when you do that.

So, again, you're going to pull all your pins out as you stitch up to them. Make sure your fabric is laying flat, so your ruffles and gathers are perpendicular to your waistband. Go ahead and come to the end. I'm gonna go ahead and do a back stitch. Now I'm gonna go ahead and clip those threads.

Now this is an optional step, which is removing your basting stitches. So, again, we are doing a half inch seam allowance and we did our gathers or our basting on quarter inch, so you could just clip your threads even with the end of your fabric and you would never see them. But if you do want to remove them, it should be fairly easy to do because you didn't stitch over them at any point. So you should just be able to grab, and then I like to just pull a little bit at a time, working my way down the fabric, like so, and I'm just pulling one of them. It doesn't matter if it's the bobbin thread or the needle thread, you're just pulling on one and you just keep doing this over and over again until you pull your thread all the way out.

Then once one thread is all the way out, then the other one, there's nothing holding it on at all, so it should also just easily pull right out. So optional step, but very easy to do, so might as well. And then now you have your pants that have been perfectly gathered, evenly distributed along your waistband. Your ruffles and gathers should be nice and straight and hang straight down, perpendicular to the waistband because you made sure that they were laying that way as you stitched over them, and that is how you gather your fabric and how you attach your gathered pant front and back top to your waistband for the Brya pants.