Ultimate Tennant Suit - time to get picky

As you may have read, I am about to make the Ultimate Tennant Suit, using half a dozen pairs of the original GAP trousers.

But before I can start any pattern cutting proper, I need to harvest the usable pieces of fabric from the trousers, so I can see what I have to work with.

To start with I tried unpicking the stitching of the legs, but quickly found that the seams are double-stitched for strength, so don’t come apart that easily. The edges of the fabric is also overlocked to stop the edges fraying, so even if I could remove all the stitching, it would leave the edges unusable as they will be peppered with holes.

I then found that by cutting the seams along the outside of the stitch-line, they easy come apart.

At the tops of the trousers there really is little point trying to rescue anything above the back pockets. There is nothing on the suit that I could make from fabric that small in size, so I cut across the tops of the leg as close to the pockets as I possibly can (see above).

I then do the same around the fronts between the fly and the side pockets (see left).

Once I have done all this I then am left with four pieces of usable fabric: two fronts and two back panels (see below, one set of each).

So far I have undone three pairs of the trousers, which gives me more than enough to get me started.

But before I can really get in there, I need to be 100% sure on my pattern . . . .