I'm just not feeling it

Sorry guys. I know I've been falling down on the sewing and blogging front. I'm exhausted, my next sewing step is hemming pants (shudder) and quite frankly, my current sewing project isn't that interesting. I've been working on the Jalie 2908 jeans pattern. There are rave reviews of this pattern all over the blogosphere, but honestly, I'm not feeling it. After sewing up my wearable muslin, I had to alter essentially everything except the legs. I altered the crotch seam and the waistband. My last pair of pants, one from Burda Young Style, didn't need nearly that much alteration. In fact, I made them before I learned to alter, and all I did was put some buttonhole elastic in the waistband. The hips fit fine. I am extremely tempted to frankenpattern the Jalie legs (which have a much nicer shape) onto the Burda hips and waist. Of course, this will take a little bit more alteration, because the Jalie jeans call for a stretch denim and the Burda doesn't, but I think it's probably less effort overall.

I feel like the Jalie pattern is just a little bit big around the hips and it might fit if I could make it a size smaller, but there's a pretty large gap between the R (which I cut out) and the Q. The difference in the hip measurement is around 2.5 inches, I think. That would be too small, I think.

Have any of my readers ever sewn pants? Got any tips to pass on? My first pair of pants worked so well, but my second was a total disaster, and now this third pair isn't working very well either. Why do I always run into problems when I try to branch out? *sigh*