Crease Line Placement at the Knee

I’m researching how different pants are styled, and I realized I never officially explored how the center grainline placement at the knee level impacts fit and style. It has been almost a year since I talked about the center grainline or crease line placement at the hip level, so I guess it is time to do another tutorial. Remember that I’ve already talked about the center grainline placement at the crotch level too. This post will round up everything you need to know about the center grainline placement.

TL;DR. It is essential to fix grainline placement at the knee before addressing grainline placement at the hip.

Finding Center Grainline

Let’s quickly review the different horizontal levels from the bottom up:

• Ankle, bottom of the pant
• Knee, centered at your knee cap
• Crotch, bottom of the crotch curve
• Hip, top of the crotch curve
• Waist, top of the pant

To place the center grainline or crease line, find the center at the ankle level and draw a line perpendicular to the ankle level. Again, review my post about crease line placement at the hip. This post will be about crease line placement at the knee level.

Method

Taking a pant pattern that I feel fits reasonably well, I made three versions for this “experiment”:

1. Left the center grainline evenly bisecting at the front and back knee level.
2. At the knee level, bisected off center towards the inseam by ½ inch for both the front and back pieces.
3. At the knee level, bisected off center towards the side seam by ½ inch for both the front and back pieces.

I made sure to do the same for the front and back pattern pieces; otherwise, I would have caused the pant leg to twist.