I may have created a sewalong monster

If you’ve been hanging around here for awhile, you know I’ve been talking about making pants for awhile. Lots of pants. As in, “I need to replace almost all that I own” pants. (It’s not my fault that all of my RTW pants are just barely too short and look stupid with my boots. Which I wear all the time in the fall.) As much as I’d love to spend my autumn sewing cute dresses to wear with tights and cardigans and the like, I know the reality of my life is that I get way too cold to wear them in the winter, and basically live in pants for those 3-ish months. So it’s a necessity. (Stupid wool allergy that won’t let me wear warmer tights…oh well.) Anyway, in my head, I’ve been calling it “pantsapalooza”. It’s kind of a running joke between my brother’s wife and myself that whenever we get together to bake things in excess, it’s automatically a “palooza”. As in, “Applepalooza” when we get together to bake a gazillion single-serving apple tarts in the fall, or “cookiepalooza” when it gets closer to Christmas.

Well, I let my little made-up word slip on Twitter the other day while a group of us were speculating about eventual Sew Bossy participation, and this may have happened….

@sew_and_so @SewExhausted @StacySews @Prttygrievnces “Pantsapalooza” 🙂 How did I miss out on that one??
— Gjeometry (@Gjeometry) August 17, 2013

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@sew_and_so @Gjeometry @StacySews lol… you should be hosting it then-Im sure there a LOTS of peeps who need a pantsapalooza!
— Sew Exhausted (@SewExhausted) August 17, 2013

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And then it kind of went on from there. To the point where it got its own hashtag, and a lot of chatter over the next day or so. Long story short, it looks like I just might be hosting a sewalong!

My thoughts so far are to start it in early September (around the 6th), and let it run until sometime in October. I’d personally like to get this wrapped up before the Doctor Who sewalong that Tempest is hosting, since I’ve been plotting for that one all summer! I’m thinking 4-6 weeks, though I’m leaning more towards 6 since we all know pants aren’t the easiest thing to fit. My own personal plan is to stick with the Thurlow trousers, since they’ve been on my list since the second I found out that Tasia was releasing that pattern, make a wearable muslin pair of shorts to check the fit, and then crank out as many pairs of pants as possible! But since there’s already been a Thurlow-specific sewalong, and paloozas should always have more than one thing going on, you could go with whatever pattern you want! I’m envisioning just a thing where we can all help each other with our fitting problems (because you know I’m no expert), encourage each other, and all have awesome pants to wear at the end.

So, since I’m a complete sewalong hosting newbie, here’s where I’d love some feedback from you more experienced sewcialists! Is 6 weeks too long? Any advice for keeping things running smoothly, other than Flickr groups? And most importantly, is this something that people would like to sew along with me on? (I could also use some advice on how to make those nifty html buttons, since my photoshop skills are pretty much limited to basic photo tweaks and that banner at the top of the page here.)