Sewing Fly Front Pants -- Love 'Em or Hate 'Em?

I realized that, over my many years of sewing, I haven't made very many fly front pants.  I don't think it's because I hate them, though.  I hadn't given them enough consideration to feel one way or another about them.

Burda 9860

For boys' pants, I've used  Kwik Sew 3399 to make a pair of trousers for my oldest son.  And I used Burda 9860 right around the same time, about 2006. Sadly, the pictures of these are lost, but the links go to the reviews I wrote for them on PatternReview.com.  The Kwik Sew instructions were excellent and I recall referring back to them when I made the Burda pants.  Logical, since Burdas are famous for their rather, um, sparse, instructions. And it was good that I had those Kwik Sew instructions.  Because without them, I probably ouldn't have realized that the Burda pattern had mysteriously omitted the pattern piece for the zipper shield.

Kwik Sew 3399

 I pulled out that Kwik Sew pattern again, and reread the instructions for installing the fly zipper.  They were just as easy as I remembered them to be.  I didn't have any trouble installing it, and these were my very first ones.  Many people have applauded Kwik Sew's instructions, and I think the reputation is well-deserved.

I've only sewn one pair of Men's fly front pants.  It was a Vogue pattern and I truly did hate that pattern.  All the lines seemed to be off somehow, and nothing about it looked right.  It was years ago and so I doubt that pattern is in print anymore.  And I don't remember it's number, anyway.  But absolutely nothing about the fly front sticks in my mind, so I'm going to assume that there was at least  nothing wrong with it.






Women's fly fronts, now that's a little bit of a different story.  My first women's fly front pants were made from a now out-of-print Kwik Sew pattern way back in 2006.  The pictures of these were also lost but you can read the review of the pattern on PatternReview.com if you're interested. 

More recently, I just made Jalie 2908 Stretch Jeans for the Mini Wardrobe contest on Pattern Review.  Jalie's fly front instructions are a little different from Kwik Sew's.  I remember while I was making them that the instructions seemed ever-so-slightly more complicated, but I found that I really liked the technique.  And the fly didn't stand open when I sat down, which I really liked.  To me, it had just one flaw:  the zipper teeth seemed to be positioned way closer to center front than in RTW.  So there's not much more than a quarter inch of fabric covering the teeth, and I didn't like that.  This may not be the pattern.  As I said, I haven't done that many fly fronts, so it might be operator error.  But I like the way RTW conceals the zipper way underneath the outside fly cover.  I resolved to figure out how to do that.  I figured it couldn't possibly be that hard.

Fast forward a couple of weeks.  This morning it was 12F degrees in our little corner of the world.  Brrrrr.  I decided it was a good day to pull out my wool melton trousers.

It wasn't until I had been wearing them half the day that I realized it had just what I was looking for in a fly front.  I was astonished.  Going back to read the original review, I saw that apparently I wasn't impressed with the instructions for the fly front, but I gotta tell ya, I am definitely impressed with the results.  The pattern is New Look 6709, and yes, I'm sorry, it is yet another OOP.  I've been buying patterns for a looooong time.  And I think I've only thrown, given, or sold away less than a dozen in all those years.

So now that I've spent some time considering the issue, do I hate 'em or love 'em? Hmmmm.  I think I like them enough to really work out a technique that works for me.  And then I suspect I'm going to love 'em.  Because I still wear jeans most days of the week and finding my size has been getting harder lately.  Making my own will solve that problem and give me the satisfaction of making even more of my clothes than I already do.

So what about you?  Fly front pants.  Do you love 'em or hate 'em, even if you don't make 'em?