How to make trousers with a side opening

Welcome to a new pattern making class. In today’s class I’m going to teach you how to make a pair of trousers with a side slit or opening.

These trousers are also known as hip hop trousers.

Hip hop trousers are characterized by having a decorative strip on the side seam that opens.

The opening system is usually snap-on poppers, but that can change.

This opening is controlled, meaning that the entire decorative strip does not open, and we do this so that the underwear is not visible.

The silhouette that I designed for these trousers is a classic silhouette that can be made more sporty by simply adding an elastic waistband and transforming the dart into volume.

Today’s class begins by transforming the patterns of the front and back of the trousers block, where we will enlarge the leg and remove the space where we will put the decorative strip.

Then we will make the patterns for the decorative strip, both the upper one, which is static and the lower one, which can be opened.

Class

Class note: As an opening system, I put a zip in the center of the back, and when I teach the class, I forget to put in the notches.

Off camera, I added a straight waistband to clean up the waist seam.

As always, I will give you all the necessary measurements to make the same design that I have made, but remember that you can change it as you like.

For example, you could make the legs much wider or even move the dart to the bottom to create palazzo trousers.

Remember that you always have to make a prototype before using the final fabric, not only to make sure that the patterns are perfect but also to make sure that you do not want to change anything in this design.

As always, remember that if you have any questions about today’s class, you can always send me an email through your student account in the support section.

Send your exercises

You already know that the best way to learn is by practicing, so for today’s class, I’m going to ask you to make the same design that I made.

You can send me these patterns in full size or half scale.

Please try to send me photos where the patterns and their annotations are clearly and precisely visible so that I can give you better feedback.