Ultralight down pants

Several cold winters with freezing nights in the snow were necessary to find a suitable warming legwear for me on the clothing market. Ultralight and small packable should be the ideal insulation pants, there was only down as a second layer in question. Many pants remained then no longer in the shortlist - the Minimus Down Trousers from PHD, the UL Down Pants from Mont-Bell and the Flash Pants from Western Mountaineering. I had the latter delivered to my home, since it is the easiest to get in Germany and, unlike the other two models, has elastic leg cuffs. A few days later I held the pants in my hands. Unworn, they also made a very quality impression - with 185g (in size L) ultra-light and nice lofty. On the body, however, it sank very quickly in my favor. The cut of the pants was simply too wide as a mid-layer and the legs for me 190cm dwarf giants clearly too short! After this disappointment remained only the way to the post office and a quick farewell to the Flash Pant, which now went on the road again. After I now had to realize that the current market does not have the right pants for me to offer, I realized that I have to take action myself and, thanks to extremtextil, it is also possible for the little man to get the right materials. After a short planning phase I ordered the following materials:
- 100g down with 860cuin
- 5m ripstop nylon, down proof, 10den with 25g/sqm
- 1,5m elastic cord 5mm
- 2m elastic tape 15mm
-1 tanka oval for 5mm cord
- sewing machine needles/microtex 5x70
- Superfine pins
- 2x200m Gütermann all sewing thread.
The cost for this was about 120,-€ in total. As a basis I took the pattern of a pair of jogging pants from Burda. Of course I had to change the cut a bit. Since I need the pant legs a bit longer anyway, I lengthened the pattern by 5cm according to the instructions and then by an additional 10cm to compensate for the shortening of the final length of the pants by bulking up the down chambers. I did not change the waist and leg width of the cut and simply chose my size based on the chart, since the cut is rather wide by design and the pants should fit tighter after down filling, since they are meant to be worn under a hardshell. I simply omitted the pants pockets included in the cut. After I then transferred the pattern pieces plus seam allowance to the fabric and cut them out, I had basically made two pairs of pants that I sewed together at the inner leg seams, the center seam at the crotch, and the back. The outer leg seams still remained open. Then, I ironed the seam allowance apart and left-side tacked the pants to each other. After that, taking into account the allowance for the hems, starting from the leg ends, I drew the down chambers at a distance of about 10cm. Now I could topstitch the chambers leaving the double seam allowance open towards the side seams. I then chose the visually nicer side as the right side and turned it inwards. Now I could baste the side seams of the "right" trouser parts and sew them together, paying attention to the seam allowance. The "left" sides had to remain open for the later down filling, of course. Then I ironed the seam allowance flat and fixed it with a glue stick. Now I could finally proceed to the down filling. For this I filled 1L breakfast bags, in the number of down chambers (36), by eye in equal parts with down. By means of a rolled up firm paper, which I put one after the other into the individual down chambers, and a long round wood I could fill these with the single portions. After filling, I was able to topstitch the side seams of the "left" trouser parts. Now I serged the seam allowance with a zigzag stitch and folded it flat along the side seam towards the back of the pants. Then I had to topstitch the down chambers along the side seam, parallel to each other, about 3cm open and thus also fixed the seam allowance neatly looking. Now that the down chambers were finished, I put the pants with several tennis balls in the dryer, so that the down in the surrounding chambers distributed evenly. Finally, all I had to do was make the hems and waistband according to the instructions and tuck in the elastic. The result is more than satisfactory - at 200g, the homemade pants are only 15g heavier than the WM Flash Pant, but are filled with twice the amount of down and are also suitable for big boys!
Andreas Karg