Sewing is fast. Perhaps a controversial take in a world that increasingly prioritises speed and convenience at all costs, but I stand by it.

Admittedly, some items take far longer than others, but the fact remains that I can wake up on a Saturday, decide I’m going to sew something, and have a new item to wear to dinner that night.

You know what is time-consuming? Documenting the stupid thing. Taking photos, writing progress notes, logging modifications, and re-filing all the pattern pieces so they don’t end up in a dangerously flammable pile on the floor of my craft room.

Ugh.

Fundamentally, I know documentation is not required of me. But I am a completionist at heart and if I’m going to do something, I will be doing to the best of my god-damn abilities. I also hate inefficiency, and my project notes have saved me alot of time over the years in being able to immediately locate all the construction, sizing, and modification details of an item I want to remake.

Unfortunately, when I’m short on time, documentation is the first thing to go. This feels great in the moment as I blitz through multiple projects in a row, but incredibly frustrating eight months later when I can’t remember what size pants I made, how much bias binding I needed for an oven mitt, or find a single photo of a finished item.

I also take a lot of pride in posting considered and detailed summaries and photos of items I’ve made. Partially this is a way to give back to the sewing community, as payment for the thousands of blog posts and instagram captions I’ve read over the years, and partially because I take pride in having a well-curated online scrapbook of things I’ve made.

However, with all the joy and community that comes with sharing your craft with the internet comes the threat of comparison, in equal measure.

It is really easy to get swept up in the beauty of your curated feed and the very aesthetic world of craft instagram. It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that you can’t post unless you have something perfect to share.

And the issue there is that the internet continues to be filled with aesthetic, detailed, highly curated pieces of content which add little substance, a lot of beauty, but definitely don’t tell me what sized pants I should make when I want to make a second pair.

All of which brings me to my beloved Briar Pants, by Daughter Judy. I made these over a year ago, sewn in an absolute fevered haze whilst I had three days off work due a secondment ending very suddenly (as in, leave your laptop on the desk when you leave today suddenly) and my substantive team being not quite ready to pick me back up yet.

I had two metres of cow-print denim in my stash; heavyweight, 100% cotton, long-coveted and rather expensive. It had been sitting there for over a year, untouched and unused. I had bought it before I’d ever made a pair of jeans and after my Dawn Jeans experience, I’d never gained the confidence to cut into such a special bit of fabric.

But having these sparkling few days off, deeply sleep deprived and fairly sick with a stuffy head cold, I threw myself into the experience. It was just a pair of jeans, what’s the worst that could happen?

I did not toile these. I simply cut, sewed, and adjusted on the fly with the deep level of satisfaction I only get from heavyweight, non-stretch fabric.

I find it meditative, working with fabric like this. The fabric doesn’t fight you like silks or chiffon or tulle and the machine doesn’t fight you like it does with stretch fabrics. And then there is the top-stitching. Metres and metres of it, nothing but you and the fabric, working together to lock down perfectly straight lines.

I love top-stitching. I love the way it makes a garment look, I love the process, and I love seeing the improvement in my top-stitching from project to project.

I threw myself into top-stitching this project with a level of dedication I have never seen before in myself, and probably will never seen again.

I redid the top-stitching on the back pockets more times than I count. I definitely remember recutting a new piece at least once. I was so fixated on having my initials on one pocket, perfect centred, and at exactly the right scale. Had I had more brain cells available at the time, I probably would have figured out how to make a template digitally, but instead, it was me, a blunt piece of chalk, and a very old and dried out washable fabric marker against the world, sketching, stitching, unpicking, resketching, and restitching until it was just right.

It was worth it in the end.

I now get to say “thanks! I even put my initials on them!” every time someone compliments my pants.

I do not remember what size I made, only a vague recollection that it was true to my measurements as per the size chart. Looking at the chart now, I suspect I probably made a size 8, graded to a 4 in the waist. I do remember I swapped the front pockets to those from the Adams Pants and added a coin pocket to emphasise the jeans visual

I also remember I made them long. Like insanely long (especially for someone with my short inseam). I wanted them full length, as opposed to the pattern’s cropped intention but I also wanted a whoppingly massive hem. This was purely for aesthetic purposes, and I love it.

I definitely overfit these in the high-hip area. In my fever addled brain I did successfully remember that denim relaxes with wear and thus made these very snug in the hip area to account for this. Unfortunately for my future comfort levels, I did forget that the pocket lining is a quilting cotton (which does not relax with wear) and runs the entire width of the front half of the pants.

To be completely honest, I can’t blame that outcome solely on my feverish mind at the time. This was not the first time I have made that particular mistake, and I suspect it will not be the last.

Either way, they have never relaxed through the hip and are not that comfortable on long car rides. It doesn’t stop me from wearing them.

Neither does a broken zip, which broke on the second time I wore these. Three teeth literally just popped off the tape as I was taking them off in the bathroom. I guess that’s what I get for cutting corners and buying the the only available jeans zip at my local Spotlight because I desperately wanted to finish my pants.

I have not yet found the strength to replace this zipper. It’s still just as broken. I have instead committed to spending additional time in the bathroom to take these on and off whilst negotiating around a very dicey zipper with multiple teeth missing.

There is always the risk that I will have a horrible and unfixable wardrobe malfunction whilst I am out, but it is a risk I have decided to live with.

I also sewed a pin into my fly. As in, literally inside the layers of fabric. I only realised this on their inaugral wear. Thankfully, it required much less unstitching that I feared at the time but I couldn’t get the top-stitching to look as good the second time round.

None of these things make me love my pants any less.

I adore these pants. They are hands down my favourite pants, no competition. They have largely rendered my other two pairs of jeans superfluous because I only wear these. After all, animal print is a neutral.

I have no aesthetic flatlays of these pants but 101 photos of me wearing them in situ. I have no idea what size I made or what other functional modifications I made, but I can tell you all about how many timing I redid the decorative stitching on the pockets.

They have weighed on my mind for over a year because I have no documentation of them. And I have never shared them on the internet because it felt useless to share a pair of pants and say “I love them and I can’t remember how I made them!”

But you know what – I love them, I can’t remember how I made them, and I still am sharing them.

Suck it up and look at them. I put my initials on my ass.