I've been sewing for a while. It's not the prettiest work, but its strong and functional. Didnt care to shell out over 200 bucks for some crye pants, so I decided to mod my own set from SKD. Turned out decent for a first attempt and just winging it. Rockywood fabrics supplied the 4 way stretch material.

Looks great. Good work

Impressive!

Did you also put elastic in the back like Crye does?

And did you make 'pockets' for the knee caps, or did you permanently attach them?

Yup, I replaced the standard fabric with two layers of 4 way stretch material, and the knee pads are removable. The Skd pants had knee pad pockets for 5.11 type knee pads, so I reused those and modified them to be the pockets for the crye knee pads.

As to the OP, hell yeah, for the last 40+ years.  Hey man that's really good work.  And yeah, hard to beat Rocky Woods for supplies, especially MC stuff.

This is a big no shitter, in that 1-200 dollar cami pants is fucking ridiculous.  Well done!

I use rocky woods too, but their zipper selection sucks.  Where do you guys get super heavy duty zippers?

Love the pants man, I'd love a tutorial if you don't mind, I'm still a novice at sewing.

Really? What kind of zippers are you looking to buy?

YKK #8 is 99% of what I use. Perfect size.

Rockwoods sells YKK #10 as well.

If you need heavier duty than that, think about a zipper that is pretty heavy for main compartment zippers for rucks and assault packs.

Normally for stretch fabric, you need a coverstitch machine, otherwise the stitches rip out.

That's the case when sewing two pieces of stretch material together, but you can get away with it sewing stretch to non stretch.

Yeah I'd say a #8 is plenty for this app; good lord I don't know what I'd need bigger than a #10 for!  I think I bought my last zips from RW for doing zip mods to assault packs for Crye PC's.  So yeah they have #10, GI.

Sewing tutorials are few and far between.  I used Poynter's Parachute Manual, Vol 1 for many years.  It has common sewing practices for parachute riggers, which are a perfect match to what we're doing, since it's the same materials.  It may no longer be available, since Sandy Reid came out with his, which has replaced Dan's manual as the official FAA riggers guide.  It's called the "Parachute Rigger Handbook" and is available at Para Gear's website, although those gonoff's want 85 bucks for it.  It used to be online so maybe look around for it.

There are also a few books on outdoor gear sewing which may be helpful.  Annie Getchell did a nice one.

Sometimes your local sewing stores will offer classes on making stuff.  So if you can suffer through one of those, you will learn basic practices for clothing fabrication.  Same same for the different "how-to" books out there.

I find sewing is sewing, so if you can talk to anyone, whether the make prom dresses, upholstery, boat canvas, quilts, whatever, there are useful techniques you can pick up from any community.  Hell I even made inter-bulkhead insulation blankets, and inter-stage blast shields for Atlas, Atlas-Centaur, and Titan-Centaur space launch vehicles.  The technique's I learned as a rigger were directly applicable to aerospace manufacturing.

Most of my bags and rucks have this big molded zipper, I just can't find a match and I have an issue with coil zipper coming apart under load.  I'm wanting to make a zip off pack/panel for a project and I'm not super trusting of the coil.  I need molded #10 by the yard or maybe bigger.

Yeah check out Rocky Woods on that.  They have a few lengths plus the metal zips.  I usually get one a few inches longer because with a separating zip you only need the starter end factory; the other end can be cut to length, with a little extra that you double fold at the end to create a bumper.  You just have to carefully remove a few teeth with a small pair of dykes to allow clean folds.

Here's a quick rundown on how I did this. First, I marked on the knees where the pads should go, since it wouldn't be in the center of the pants. Next, I cut out a large portion and put two layers of 4 way stretch material in place. I then marked where the center of the knee pad would go.  After that, i used the material that I had originally cut out to make pockets for the knee pads. I pinned them down, sewed them in place and the sewed the inseam back up. Everything was double stitched with nylon bonded thread.