I thought we’d take a look at the inside of a pair of Luna Pants so you can see what the innards look like. I really like to have a sense of how garments are put together, and the inside really helps me visualize that. These pants are the double gauze Lunas we made for Melissa to wear in the “Luna Pant Photoshoot” post (the double gauze is Monochrome by Ellen Luckett Baker for Kokka and I picked it up at Jones and Vandermeer). Melissa’s favorite color is green, so Karen found a half yard of green shot cotton in the studio and used that to make the waistband and pockets for the pants. Karen loves to include fun “surprises” on the inside of garments, so this was right up her alley. You can see little peeks of the green from the side and when the pants are on the hanger:

Here’s what they look like from the inside, front:

Inside, back:

As you can see, the pockets attach at the side seams, and then fold forward so that their tops get tucked (and finished) under the lower edge of the waistband facings, which forms the casing for the waistband elastic. There’s a few reasons I really like this type of construction. First, the pockets don’t hang free and flop around inside the pants, so the pants are less bulky at the hips (see below for a nice example of this; also, someone requested a back shot in comments the other day!).

Second, you can save a little yardage if you cut the pockets and waistband out of a separate fabric in some cases, so that’s another bonus. Due to the way the pockets and waistbands are arranged on the cutting layouts, you can get by with 1/4 yard less of your main fabric if you’re using 44″-wide fabric for all sizes, and 54″-wide fabric for sizes XL and XXL. So when you’re buying $$$ fabric, this can really be worth it.

You’ll need 1/2 yard of contrast fabric for the pockets and waistband if you go this route. And even though you won’t save main fabric yardage for most of the sizes in the 54″-wide fabric, you’ll have bigger scraps leftover for little projects later!

Here’s a close-up of the cuffs, so you can see how they are put together. Just a simple fold-up casing for the elastic:

A bunch of my patterns include a “Seam Finishes Appendix” with instructions and diagrams to clean up your seams. Since we went more of a streamlined route with Luna to make it a Presto Pattern, we decided not to add the appendix to the pattern itself, but we’ve made it into a free PDF download that you can download, or find anytime on the Luna Page under “Resources.”

Luna Pants, inside-out

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