Fish-Eyed Eleonores

On my last pair of Eleonores I gathered the back waistband by stretching a shortened length of elastic along the piece as I sewed. The whole time (like 1.33 minutes, but still) I was petrified that I'd compromise the timing mechanism on my vintage machine (again). So for this pair I drew a 2" fish eye dart in the center of the back waistband and clipped the excess fabric.

Center waistband seam is actually a dart. 

Attaching it required easing with ALL THE PINS and a bamboo skewer to nudge the bulk into the seam allowance. In the end I still have a couple of puckers that I couldn't pin out. So when I discovered that I accidentally sewed the waistband elastic side out, I wasn't exactly keen to rip and re-sew. Thankfully I wear my shirts tucked out. (I would joke about not wanting to get into a car accident wearing these pants but my daughter just got her permit.)

Puckers!

This version is also slightly transformé en skinny, to quote the French version of the instructions. I narrowed the leg to be something between skinny and straight. This tutorial is super-clear, but it took me about 3 tries to finally get it right. Thankful for the tip about using your scraps to trace and modify your pattern.

Before and After: "skinny" leg on the right. 

The fabric is a burgundy version of the gray sateen that I used for my first pair. The gray pair has stretched incredibly after a few wearings, and I'm wondering whether this is a reflection of poor fabric quality or if stretch wovens just don't keep their shape over the long haul.

Have you found that stretch fabrics sag a lot?