This past year I have been on a fitness journey and have been consistently weight training for over a year. Which has been amazing for both my mental and physical health. But the changes in my body over the past year have brought some unexpected sewing and fitting challenges. Gaining muscle in the leg and bum areas have resulted in a fitting problem every time I try to sew a fitted pant, skirt, or shorts: the back of the waistband gapes! Some patterns are worse than others, but every fitted bottom I’ve tried sewing in the last six months or so has had this problem to some degree.

So if you’re in the same boat and always have trouble with gaping at the center back of the waistband, I’m going to show you the pattern fitting solution I found – a curved waistband! When I discovered the curved waistband, it was the most magical and beautiful discovery ever because the curved waistband literally fits my curves like a glove.

Ok, let’s get into the tutorial!

How to draft a curved waistband

If you’re having a problem with the waistband gaping, most likely your pattern came with a standard straight waistband. This means it is just one big rectangle that gets folded over and sewn onto the top of the garment. Your first step to figure out what adjustments to make is to sew up a muslin of the pattern with the waistband included in the pattern. This was my first fitting muslin of my Lander Pants, I had about 1 inch of gaping at the center back with this particular pattern. Yours may gape more or less than this.

pants fitting muslin

First measure (or approximate) how much fabric needs to be removed from the top of your waistband. As I mentioned, I needed to remove about 1 inch.

Now we’re going to make our adjustments to our pattern. Because a curved waistband is…well… curved, you can’t sew it to the waistline and then fold it over to the inside like you would a straight waistband. So it has to be cut in two pieces – the outside and the inside waistband.

So grab your straight waistband pattern piece and draw a straight line down the middle of it. Then add another line 1/2 inch above the line you drew up the center (this is your seam allowance). Cut along this line and discard the narrower side of the waistband. Like this:

graphic showing how to cut the waistband to make a curved waistband

Now with the portion of the waistband pattern that you kept – the larger, lower portion in the drawing above – find and mark the center back of the waistband (mine was marked by double notches). Then cut a straight line almost all the way through the waistband from the top. Here is what mine looked like:

the center of the waistband is cut almost all the way through

Then overlap the cut edges and tape it down, measuring so that it overlaps by the amount of fabric you wanted to remove. So mine is overlapped by 1 inch.

overlapped edges along top edge of curved waistband patter

NOTE: if you needed to remove a lot of fabric – say, more than 2 inches – you can cut two additional slices in the pattern on either side of the center cut and spread the amount you need to take out across the three sliced areas. This will give you a more gradual and nicer curve than if you were to take all of that out just at the center back.

Now we can cut out our new curved waistband. You’ll need to cut two waistband pieces with the curved waistband pattern piece:

two curved waistband pieces

And sew them together along the top (inner curve) edge with a 1/2 inch seam allowance. Grade your seam allowances to remove bulk and iron the seam so your waistband lies nicely.

curved waistband sewn together curved waistband ready to attach

Now you can just attach the waistband following your pattern instructions in the same way you would the straight waistband. The lower (outer curve) edge will fit the waistline just fine because we only took fabric out along the top edge of the waistband! Here’s what my fitting muslin of my Lander pants looked like after I turned the waistband into a curved one:

Lander pants muslin with curved waistband

No more gaping at the center back! And in case you’re curious, here’s my finished Lander pants in my actual fashion fabric (some cotton canvas from Minerva).

Lander pants made from black and white geometric canvas

 

 

Thanks for reading, I hope you found this helpful! Let me know if you draft yourself a curved waistband for your next sewing project, I would love to hear about your sewing adventures. You can DM me on Instagram or send me an email through my contact page!

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