Set back with OTP fabric

I brought home proto1 of one true pants yesterday.  Mucho excitement was my first response.  The style and fit of the pants are really close to perfection.  They dress down with a t-shirt and up with a botton-down very well.  While all kinds of stuff can be carried in the seven pockets, my wife has brought into doubt how well the pants drape on the body when much stuff is carried in the front pockets.  (I think she is just anti-stuff, while my stance toward stuff boarders on passionate.)

Just before scurrying off to work I threw them in the wash – nothing major, just a cold rinse and then on to a partial dry in cool heat.  Unfortunately, when the pants were removed from the dryer there was already evidence of wear and tear on some of the seams.

Obviously this does not live up to OTP standards for making “the best damn pair of pants you will ever own.” (While it does qualify for “damn, these pants suck,” this is not our end target.) It appears that we are experiencing unexpected consequences from the weave of the hemp canvas when making fine seams around pockets, etc.  The first theory is that the weave is too loose/not tightly packed enough to prevent unraveling when sown using typical stitching.  The heavy-duty seams appear to be fine, but a couple of the the areas where little wear was expected are failing.  I feel like an old “Scotty” quote from Star Trek would be appropriate here.

Maybe we simply need to approach the sowing process differently.  Possibly we need to pursue a different style fabric altogether.  I suppose this was what I expected to happen while flying blind into creating a new product frontier, but still disappointing.  Kish and I will have to mind meld and try to figure this one out.  I am also trying to bring in some minds out there with more experience using hemp in fine textiles.  If you have experience with this sort of thing give a shout out.