State Fair Trousers

Throat-clearing

The Minnesota State Fair looms large in our state, even in the urban center. We call it the Great Minnesota Get-Together, and I love it unreasonably. For the last few years, I've been entering in the garment-making competition, as described in this PDF. I'm very proud that I have gotten a few red ribbons (second place), but I long for a blue (first place).

There's some strategy in this. What you do is look at the previous year's winners and determine what category is far too full for you to compete in. For example, there are 19 entries in Women's Blouse. If 19 people think they make a blouse good enough for the Fair, then there are probably people doing it who are better than I am. (This goes so much more for knitting and quilting. If 42 people think they make a competition-worthy cabled sweater, well...). This dictates what you're going to make for the year. Of course, many people make the same calculation, so it's still a guess.

This year I decided that my categories would be

• 424: Historic reproduction clothing, documentation of historic pattern must be included
• 417: Blazer, lined or unlined

And that's all the description you get. You just better hope that your understanding of "historic" matches the judge's.

State Fair Trousers

I've made this pattern before, albeit 10 years ago. It's got some good provenance, and I think it will count. I did use fusible interfacing, but otherwise there's nothing I'm doing that couldn't have been done by sewing machines of the era. I have this really excellent multi-color houndstooth wool that I made a cape from, but what do you wear a wool cape with? The obvious answer is old-timey trousers.

I set up my trusty projector and cut out all the (many) pieces.

The thing about State Fair sewing is that I am, by nature, a bodger. Close enough is good enough for things I'm making for myself. However, the consistent feedback I get from the state fair judges is that my vision is good, but my execution is imperfect - my finishing details are especially likely to be sloppy. So every year, I set myself to sew something without succumbing to my besetting sin - laziness.

If something doesn't match, I go back and adjust it until it does, instead of easing it. In order to make these trousers look good, I needed to hand-baste all the seams so that the horizontal lines match up. Here, let me show you the difference.

I did hand-baste these to match, but had a total brain-fart, and matched them at a 1/4th inch in from the fabric edge, instead of 5/8ths, which is the actual seam allowance on this pattern. Since the fabric is not square pieces, that mattered. So then I had to rip all the seams out and re-hand-baste and re-sew.

And it's been the same every time I attach one piece of this garment to another. Tweaking and hand-basting and ripping to get it Right, instead of Good Enough. Because that's what I'm being judged on.

I finished my night with the crotch seam, and I basted on the red lines, because that's what's easiest for me to see. But I am genuinely unsure if it's correctly aligned - the red lines do line up, but I would expect the other colors to form a chevron. Unless I'm misunderstanding how "even" the plaid is. Anyway, this is either spot-on or half-a check off, which is like half an inch, and I need to rip out that seam. What do you think?

More on my State Fair adventures as I keep working. I'm still figuring out Leaflet, so the posting style may not be consistent, but it's good to have a place to store this.

State Fair Trousers, Update 2