when I try to add a back yoke to the jeans pattern via the yoke addition, it doesn't show up on the patterns pieces. Help.---Den

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when I try to add a back yoke to the jeans pattern via the yoke addition, it doesn't show up on the patterns pieces.

Before anyone answers, we need a bit more information here. I checked adding a standard pants yoke (I chose "Curve to center point") to the Dress Shop 7 jeans pattern and that seemed to work. Dress Shop 8 jeans have a yoke built in, so you should not use the yoke tool with that pattern.

Which version of Dress Shop are you looking at, with which pattern and which yoke type.

DS7 with jeans and different yoke styles-none showed up as a pattern piece. However, if I go to DS8, it may be a moot point.---Denise

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DS7 with jeans and different yoke styles-none showed up as a pattern piece. However, if I go to DS8, it may be a moot point.---

I'm not sure what is going on there. I drafted a DS7 jeans pattern and used the yoke tool to select a yoke and I saw a yoked pants pattern. But, what I was getting was a standard pants yoke and as you say, that may be moot. With Dress Shop 7, we called that a jeans pattern, but we learned a lot during our jeans research earlier this year and one of the things we learned was that our earlier jeans pattern was not really a true jeans pattern. It was a very rough approximation.

When we redid jeans this past January, as we worked on MPD The Jeans Machine, we did a lot of research about jeans and how they differ from other pants. There are many differences and it leads to a closer fit and a different look. Many people do not like jeans and that is usually because off-the-shelf jeans do not fit many body types. They are very close fitting pants and they are designed for certain body shapes and do not work well with others.

The Dress Shop 7 jeans did not improve on that problem very much as they were basically just close fitting pants with some jeans-like features, but they were not true jeans.

With the new jeans we developed for the MPD Jeans Machine (and which are also now included in Dress Shop 8) there is a very different pair of pants. The crotch extensions are adjusted, the front waist is lowered slightly, the back waist dart is adjusted, there is a custom jeans specific contoured waistband, and there is a jeans-specific back yoke. That back yoke has hidden, horizontal darts in it that make it fit differently than any other yoke or pants waist type.

Those changes together make up what the industry calls jeans. The difference between our jeans and off-the-shelf jeans is that ours are drafted to your measurements, same as all the other Dress Shop patterns. That makes an incredible difference. For people that have never found a pair of jeans that really worked for them, it may well be that you just never found one made for your body shape. Several of our test team had long ago given up on ever wearing jeans and this new pattern changed their minds and they are now jeans enthusiasts.

These jeans fit incredibly well. Our test team included some very different shapes, with a variety of fit problems, and every one of them came up with jeans that fit really well. If you want to see some more photos of those testers and what their jeans, take a look at this MPD page, which has a few more photos than the Dress Shop pages:

http://www.mypatterndesigner.c...ntsDesignerJeans.htm

These jeans are the same patterns that are included with Dress Shop 8. The photos almost do not do justice to how incredible these jeans are. The photos all look pretty good. But, they are close ups of just the pants, so you really cannot easily tell how radically those bodies differ from each other. There is an extremely varied group of body shapes there, each with its different fit issues and the MPD / DS8 jeans fit them all really, really well.

Having gone through 9 months of work to get those jeans working that well, I really cannot say that the Dress Shop 7 jeans are worth struggling with at this point. But, of course, after that work and after seeing what we achieved, I am certainly biased... ;-)

I would like to confirm Bob's comment on the excellent fit of the MPD jeans and I am sure also DS8 jeans. I was one of the testers. We made Bob just through hoops to get these right.

When we started testing I thought that I would NEVER make real jeans. WRONG! This morning I am making my 8th pair because they fit so well and are so comfortable that I can't go back to RTW. Maybe that is a downside because it is easier to buy them...but they never fit quite right.

Jeans are not that hard to sew. True, they have lots of details and top stitching but I LOVE that part. You can't make them in an hour, but extra time is worth the effort.

So whichever upgrade you choose...try some jeans! You might like them! I know you will like the new pants draft.
Nancy