Jeans - flat fell and french seam

[regfman]

I'll enrich this with a bit of irrelevant background:
I've been on an effort to lose a little weight and have been mildly successful. It's been about six months and I have lost about 10 lbs by simply cutting out all wheat and sugar. No pastas, no sandwiches, no sweets except fruit. It's not that hard. I am not losing the weight fast but it is kind of steady and I think I can keep this up and drop another 10 to be where I want to be, maybe even 20 to really lose the belly.
Anyway,
I don't buy high end jeans. I like Wranglers and have a few pair that are 34x30 and are now too loose. They are well worn and I expect that they've stretched a bit. Seems like there is a couple inches of gap in the waist. So I bought a pair online at 32x29 and they turned out to be way too tight. So then I figured I'd try 33x30. (Unfortunately they don't offer a 33x29) and they also turned out to be the same tightness. Holding them together they seem to be exactly the same waist size. They also seem to have the exact same crotch distance to waist. If they are different it seems like less than a quarter inch on each side. I guess a quarter inch difference when laid flat would work out to 1" in reality as it's 1/4 front left, 1/4 rear left, 1/4 front right, 1/4 rear right. I think I'll keep the larger pair.

Comparing them they both have the same stapled on labels, the same sewn in product style label and the model numbers are exactly the same, just the size is marked differently. But interestingly I noticed that the seams are done differently between the two. I've never really paid attention to the seams. I did a little browsing about seams and learned that the two types of seams on jeans appear to be a french seam where you don't see the stitching and a flat fell seam where you do see at least two lines of stitches. On one pair of jeans the french seam is on the outside of the legs and the flat fell seam is on the inseam. On the other pair of jeans the flat fell is on the outside and the french seam is on the inside. Same Wrangler model number, just different size.
I think I don't really have a preference one way or the other but looking at the causal pants that I have I see it tends to be that the heavier duty (Dickies for example) pants put the flat fell on the outside of the leg.

 

[LA Guy]

The inseam on Levi's style jeans are felled. The outseam on Wranglers are. I don't think that I've ever seen a French seam on jeans. Take a picture. My $10 says that they are not French seams. Most jeans use a mixture of busted and felled seams.

 

[regfman]

Is "busted" the term I should be using? And is there a difference between felled and flat felled?
Here's a pic comparing the two pairs. Regardless of the terminology - a sincere thank you for educating me on this- I find it interesting that these two pairs that are supposedly just different sizes are constructed differently.
and BTW, Now that I look closely I think the front pockets have a slightly different shape.

 

[LA Guy]

Here is a flat felled or felled seam,

and here is the general construction (there are other ways, but this is the most common):

Here is the inside of a busted seam:

And jeans vary between season and years even in the same model.

Cheers,

Fok.

 

[regfman]

What's another name for a "busted" seam? When I duckduck it I don't see much defining that use of busted.

 

[regfman]

• 
  "Busted Seam:
  Contrary to what you might think, this seam actually offers a second line of defense against "busting." It gets its name from the way the two pieces of fabric are sewn together and then pressed open. The raw edges are finished with an overlock stitch, and the extra material allows room for tailoring." from Eileenfisher.com