Slow and Steady Wins The Race

After much thought, which was the only resource I could devote to sewing this week, I decided to make a black muslin of the pink knit workout shirt I'm making with Vogue 8151. The pink shirt is to go with the brown yoga pants I have not yet made. Sigh.

Today I made the pattern adjustments and cut out the black knit.

I'm using size G, but I tapered to J in the hips. That sounds so easy, but deciding how to taper under the bust dart was hard. It seems to be a sharp angle. We'll see if it works. I lengthened it six inches, because I like long shirts with pants. I also lowered the front neck edge one inch and shortened the sleeve cap one inch based on various reviews on Pattern Review. That's all I was able to get done this weekend.

I've been busy teaching and learning. I'm teaching a new course this semester, so I have new materials to constantly read. I'm also taking a Web Design course, which is very fun, but time consuming. For instance, I just got distracted reading my "Edit Html" screen. I often get extra breaks between paragraphs in blogger, and I haven't yet figured out exactly why or how. I'm getting close to knowing enough to go in there and really edit. Cool, huh? Well, it is to me because I'm not technologically astute. Only one more week of various parent's nights and other beginning of school time-suckers, so hopefully I can get more obligatory tasks done during the week and more sewing in on weekends.

First week of school and still got something done!

I've finished my big-legged pants. My husband and 13-year-old son say they are weird, but my 17-year-old son says they are fashionable. Since he's the one checking out girls, he's the one whose fashion judgment I'll trust. Mine are a bit big in the thighs compared to today's wide-leg pants, but that's a problem with my body. My hips are large while my thighs are very skinny. If you cut me horizontally right through the waist, the part that's left below would look just like a mushroom. It's hard to fit something on my hips and thighs at the same time. If the fabric fits, I still look weird.

In the end, I like them. They are comfortable. The fit in the butt better than any pants I've ever made. I finally got the crotch curve lowered right to I don't have wrinkles pointing to my butt.

The fabric was very loosely woven. I interfaced the seams along the hip area, where I would expect stress. I also zig-zagged along the seam allowance, catching the serging threads and extending the anchoring closer to the straight stitch. Without the zig-zag, I think the serging would have unraveled after a few washings. The hem needed something to stop the unraveling, so I interfaced the hem allowance and serged the edge of both fabric and interfacing, then folded up right along the other edge of the interfacing. I'm intrigued by Laura's comment about interfacing past the hem allowance, so I'll try that soon.

There are loose thread all over my sewing room. I was trying to get to a deep cleaning before school started, but I didn't make it. I'm glad, since I would have had to vacuum up all those threads anyway. Now I really need to get in there and vacuum!

It's a Hybrid

I tried a new method of attaching my waistband. I don't like it. I usually use the method on page 116 of Pants for Real People (PFRP). It's a combination of a regular waistband and an elastic waistband.

In real elastic waistband, the fabric would measure the same circumference around the hips and waist, with only the elastic bringing in the fabric to the waist measurement. In a real waistband, the fabric measures more around the hips and is brought in with darts and curves at the waist. The waist is fitted and the zipper opens the smaller waist circumference to go over the larger hips.

The combo method combines the darts, curves, and zipper to allow less fabric gathered at the wast, while it also uses elastic to cinch in the bit of extra waist ease. I have many pants where I've used the PFRP page 116 method. It gives me the best of both worlds. I often think of the elastic as the interfacing of the waistband. It gives it a rigidness that is firm, but flexible.

I saw something somewhere that may have been this exact new method, but I didn't read it and don't remember it enough to be sure. It got my mind thinking that this would be a good new method to try. I was wrong.

I started by serging one raw edge of my waistband and attaching the other raw edge to the pants.
Then I attached the ends of the elastic to the seam allowance of the pants, lining up one edge with the edge of the zipper and letting the other edge hang over for the under flap. I did not stretch the elastic in these spots. I could not decide if it mattered which side I attached the elastic to -- the inside or the outside. I attached it inside, but it would have been better attached to the outside. I'll tell you why when we get to it.
Next I stretched the elastic as I sewed it to the seam allowance. This turned out to be the fatal flaw. The elastic did not shrink back to its original size.

Then I sewed the ends neatly by hand. This is where I discovered that had I put the elastic on the outside of the pants, the seam allowance would have folded over it and covered it. I had to hand sew carefully to cover the elastic. It worked fine, but the elastic on the other side would have been a tiny bit easier.

Then I stitched in the ditch. As I imagined, this step was much easier than the PFRP technique. It was the desire to avoid the anxiety of accidentally stitching through my elastic on this step that prompted trying this new method.

The final waistband looks fantastic, but it left the pants too big in the waist. In PFRP, the elastic casing is sewn with the elastic in there, attached only at one end. Then the loose elastic which is hanging out is pulled to fit your waist while you wear them. It's fool proof on final fit.

In the end, this method was easier, but not worth the loss of fit. I'll go back to page 116 and just get through the anxiety. Funny thing is, I've never sewn through the elastic accidentally!

Happy Day

That's better! My knit fabric from Sew Baby arrived. The pink goes so nicely with the brown. It's not a jersey like a t-shirt. It's a very thin interlock, but it is thin like a t-shirt. It's not thin as in cheesy. It's quite luxurious and of high quality. I've already washed the black and it washed beautifully.

I also received my Burda World of Fashion, quickly joined by a copy of Stitches, which I picked up when I went out to buy that pesky zipper I was missing. Stitches appears to be a very good magazine. It has detailed articles about garment sewing with many diagrams and photographs. I've only had time to flip through it so far, but I'm impressed.

I finally got some time to actually sew, and I put in my first lapped zipper. It was easy and the results are very professional looking. I did my first one right on my actual project. That caused some stress, but no real problems. I used these directions, but also discovered some directions inside the zipper package. The two sets of directions were the same except for the direction from which you viewed your work.

I started by reinforcing my seam allowance because the fabric is very loosely woven. My center back seam on my pants is curved because it has a built in dart. I curve A LOT in my butt. I refer to this as my "Butt Shelf." I swear you could set a drink on it. I was worried about the zipper application with such a curve, but it worked fine.

As you can see, the final result is wonderful. I love it. You can see the chevron that's made by the darting that sits on my "Butt Shelf."

I've finished the side seams and the inseams, as well as all the crotch seams. I need to fit my darts, attach the waist band, then hem them. I've already pressed the seams and tried them on. They look great! I altered these to fit better so I've made a lot of changes, as well as a style change. I've made the legs very wide. I like them!

Plans Gone Awry

I went to put a zipper in the pants I'm working on, but after printing directions for a lapped zipper (which I've never done before) and finding black interfacing to interface the zipper area, I went to measure the width of the zipper and discovered -- no zipper!

I didn't feel like driving to the store, so I cleaned out the cupboards in my sewing room and sorted most of my stash.

This looks quite formidable in real life. This picture makes it look dinky in comparison to some of the stashes you guys have posted! There is fabric for 31 garments there. Thirty-one!

Having it all in one place will help me use it up more, I hope.

This is one last pile of miscellaneous fabric and half-done projects that I need to sort. It's sitting on the floor under my large ironing board/cutting table. These are abandoned home-related sewing projects: a cat bed, couch cover, and table cloth set. All half-done!


Here's the pile of ready-to-wear that I'd like to alter, with a few abandoned muslins thrown in.

I long for my old life in North Carolina. My husband once referred to our lives in North Carolina as "the gold standard of family happiness." I did the most sewing in the least space there. In my bedroom, I had an ironing board and a small table with my serger and sewing machine. I had two large Rubbermaid tubs of sewing stuff in my closet. That was it. I cranked out a lot of garments, made a house full of curtains, and had no mending pile. I used to mend whatever had gathered during a project before I started the next one. I alternated between a garment for me and a house project until I had made curtains for every room in the house. I tried a lot of new things there and improved my sewing skills tremendously. Sigh. I sure was productive then.

So, after that reminder that I was just as busy but more productive in North Carolina, here are my excuses. I'm sewing slowly these days because we've been making great progress on cleaning the house. One teenage boys has inexplicably started helping, so I'm seizing the moment. School starts for me soon, so I've been getting my stuff ready, and I'm taking a class on Web Site Design. I'll be learning about Dreamweaver, HTML, XHTML, and CSS, whatever they are. I bought the books and have been reading to prepare for class. I'm such a good student!

I'll buy that zipper tomorrow.

Went Shopping with Mom!

When my mom came to visit from Phoenix, we went fabric shopping.

My mom's friend lives half of the year in Syracuse and half of the year in Phoenix. Syracuse is a bit of a drive from my house, but we went to visit mom's friend. Mom's friend's sister-in-law owns Cottons, Etc near Syracuse, so they figured that, since I love sewing, we'd go there. I was a little worried because it is predominately a quilt shop, and non-garment-sewers don't often understand why I think a fabric shop full of fabric could have nothing worth buying.

It turned out that the fabric alone was worth the trip. Cottons, Etc has a room they call the "fashion room," and it is full of a variety of garment fabrics. Here's what I got:

The fabric on the left on 2 3/4 yards of a woven cotton/ploy/rayon blend. It's soft and flowing. It's for a non-specific skirt.

The next is 2 3/4 yards of a woven 100% rayon. It is also soft and flowing. It is also for a non-specific skirt.

The one on the right is a thin 100% rayon knit. I bought that with V8151 in mind.

In the second photo, the fabric on the left is 2 1/2 yards of a linen-like 40% rayon, 40% poly, 15% flax blend.

Next to it is 2 1/2 yards of a linen-like 100% rayon purchased to match. Here's where the mystery comes in. After washing all the fabric and setting it aside for a month, I pulled it out and thought, "Hmm. Where did my green go and why is this brown fabric here? Did I buy brown and I'm remembering wrong?" Looking at my notes, I found it listed as green. It's as brown as brown can be. I don't know if this color change happened in the wash or in my mind. Could be either. I'm bad with colors.

I'm not planning to use any of these fabrics too soon. I bought them for my stash, not for any current projects. I'm working on a pair of pants from an alteration of these pants. I have lots of pictures, but little courage to post them. When I'm done with the pants I'll have to see what I end up having the courage to post.

Eight Years and Two Millennia

My family was cleaning the garage a few weeks ago and we found this quilt. It was in a box labeled toys from my now 17 year old son's room that never got unpacked when we moved here from North Carolina.

Here's my quilt history: I always loved to sew clothes. During the years when my weight fluctuated because of pregnancies, I got frustrated. I wanted to try quilting because it sounded easy. I knew I could make beautiful clothes, so how hard could a couple of squares be? I moved to Illinois and made friends with my neighbor, Julie, a quilter. She encouraged me to try and helped me get started. It was the most humbling sewing experience of my life. It was way harder than it looked. I made a hand quilted quilt that I hung on the large expanse of wall created by my cathedral ceilings in North Carolina. People would come in, admire it, and exclaim, "Oh, you make quilts!" I would answer, "No. I made quilt. That's it."

I often said, "Thank goodness for Sears quilts. Because of them, few notice how bad mine is!" I enjoyed my quilting phase, but I knew I wanted to return to making clothes. I have some pretty wall hangings and one lap quilt to remember the phase by, but I don't quilt now.

In the meantime, my oldest son was intrigued by my quilting. I have a little wall hanging he made that has six enormous squares on it. He was five when he made it. He named it "shapes." It is machine quilted and the stitching lines bear little resemblance to the seam lines. It's very cute.

He started this quilt in 1999 in Watertown when he was nine and in fourth grade. He machine pieced all the squares himself and hand quilted three lines of stitching before he forgot about it. You can see in the photo that some of his stitches are perpendicular to each other. He, too, was humbled by quilting!

I remember this quilt lying around in North Carolina and I occasionally suggested he work on it, but he never did. When we found it in the garage, he seemed so pleased to remember it and his quilting. I knew I needed to finish it so it would be a displayable memory.


I really finished it more for his future wife than for him. I hope he has a wife who will respond to a guest's exclamation of "Oh, you quilt!" by plucking it off the wall, saying "No, Andy did," and telling the whole story.

I took the lazy way out and just folded the backing over the front for the binding. I don't like it. First, I prefer a contrast binding, and second, the machine stitching that secures the binding to the quilt before it's folded over helps anchor the batting, and this minimally quilted quilt could have used it. I didn't want to put too much time into this, though. I think the abandoned quilting adds to its charm as a young boy's project.

I did machine stitch between the squares and the border, because it really needed something to anchor it.

The best part of the quilt is the name Andy chose. He seemed so pleased that I was finishing it, and he found it funny that it had taken so long. I told him that since it's his quilt, he needs to name it, so he came up with "Eight Years and Two Millennia." The label says "pieced and hand quilted by Andy, 1999" and "machine quilted and bound by Alana, 2007."

We've covered a lot of ground since "Shapes."

What was I thinking?

I decided that I want a stripe down the leg of my brown yoga pants that matches my shirt, so I came up with what seemed like a good idea. I would buy two pink t-shirts and use one for the stripe and one to wear with the pants. I went to ONE store, a K-Mart at that, couldn't find a nice, pink t-shirt, so bought two of these ghastly green t-shirts. Why do I do such things?!?

I couldn't bring myself to do it. First, I look terrible in the green t-shirt. It's thin and cheap and it shows. Second, the green doesn't go with the brown at all. It looks like puke together. What was I thinking?!? Probably something along the lines of, "I have so much to do that if I don't buy something today, I'll never get anything, every." I'm very dramatic about such things.

Today I took decisive action. I put the two new t-shirts aside and ordered some pink fabric. I got it at Sew Baby. I'm planning to make Vogue 8151 for the top. I ordered the fabric from Sew Baby because they have the matching fabric and rib knit trim. I'm a bit confused because the site describes the fabric as "t-shirt knit (interlock)" which is a contradiction to me. I think of t-shirt knit as jersey and I don't think of interlock as t-shirt fabric. I'm not sure which I hope it turns out to be, jersey or interlock, since what I'd really like is a source for both. Whichever it is, I'm excited to have a source that sells matching rib knit trim.

I also ordered enough black to make two tops. I've realized that black is the perfect wearable muslin color. One can never have too many black clothes, I've discovered. I also ordered the August edition of Burda World of Fashion. Might be a bust for me, since it has few plus sizes, but all the other sewing bloggers use it, so I must explore.

Subtle Yet Satisfying

Here's the before picture.
















Here is the after picture. I raised the sleeves up and opened up the neckline.

I learned some interesting things on this t-shirt. It was a size 2X. I think a 3X is easier to alter and get just like I like it. First of all, the hips only just fit. I would prefer more wiggle room. Next, there wasn't that much shoulder width to cut off, so when I wanted to raise up the underarm hole, I didn't have the left over shoulder fabric to fill in the underarm. I ended up with a very long armscye and not that much sleeve seam line. I had to stretch the sleeve to fit, so the sleeves look a little less fitted than I would like. My next t-shirt alteration is a 3X, so we'll see if a slow careful 3X alteration gives me the best results.

The Short Answer is 2 1/2 Hours

I received a question asking how long it takes to alter a t-shirt like this. It really got me thinking. I suppose, if I worked faster, I could do it in an hour. However, I'm a very slow sewer.

I spent about an hour and a half on the sleeves and an hour on the neck and hem together. That includes at least forty-five minutes hemming and hawing about what I needed to do. That's the part that's a problem when I'm rushed. It eats a up a lot of time, but I don't mind doing it. Actually, I seem to need to do it.

Being able to think about all my alternatives and choosing the one I really want is a big part of my sewing enjoyment. Over the years I have realized that sewing is the only thing I do that is completely for me. I get to make any decision I want. I can keep a mistake or redo it. I can go get more notions or use what I have. I can do the quick fix or the long solution. It's all in my hands. Real life isn't like that. I have to work around other's needs and desires, using limited resources and limited time. But with sewing, I can do whatever I want. I often choose the long way and the hard way. Not always, but often.

I wonder if this is what makes hobbies enjoyable to people. Is this why the guy who builds train villages in his basement does it? Is this why a painter paints? A stamp collector collects? Or is it some other reason?

One of the sewing blogs I enjoy is The Slapdash Sewist. I think she is experiencing the same thing. Sure, she chooses the slapdash solution, but the same principle is at work. She can make any decision she wants, so she makes the one that pleases her. So do I. I think we could happily sew along side each other, laughing at each other's decisions, but totally getting it.

Friday night I sewed the pre-pinned binding of a small wall quilt. Took about two hours. It was maybe thirty minutes of work. I was watching TV. Yesterday I altered the sleeves of another t-shirt and it took one hour. I timed it this time with my stop watch. For the first five minutes, just having the stop watch going freaked me out. It was taking away my joy.

I once seriously contemplated being a sewing professional. I started timing myself. It took eight hours to make a pair of jeans and five hours to make a pair of dress pants with all the details like welt pockets. I suspect that's a really long time. Speeding up is no fun for me.

I am enjoying the process of altering t-shits as much for the acquisition of skills as for the new, fitted shirts. I think if sewing was about saving money at a minimum cost of time, I'd have quit as a failure a long time ago. For me, sewing is about having exactly what I want, made exactly the way I feel like making it.

exercise 0, sewing 1, God 100

What a week! I didn't "exercise" once, but I was on my feet the whole week. I had a blast at Faith Formation week, sometimes lovingly called Catholic Boot Camp. It was worth all the work. I hope my students learned a lot, but in the end, if the only thing they learned was "I belong," I've done my job. I know God will do the rest. To belong to our motley crew of dedicated Christians is not a bad fate at all. With all that confidence in God on my side, I managed to teach them much more.

I manged to sew a little bit, but am I mad at myself. I told myself a million times, "When you get your 'Walk (T)His Way' t-shirt, take a picture of it before you alter it!" After I started hacking into it, I remembered! GRRRR. I was rushed.

I requested a 3X, because I wanted it loose around my hips. It was, but like any man's t-shirt, the arms hung off my shoulders and I hated it. I took off the sleeves and put little darts down the under arms, stopping at the top of my hips. The underarm hole was way too deep, so I took the extra shoulder fabric and put in an underarm patch. That raised up the underarm. Then I cut the new sleeve and reattached it. I love the underarm patches, but I hate how the t-shirt turned out. I cut too much shoulder width off and cut the sleeve too short. Half an inch on each would have made them hang nicer. Sigh. I was rushed since I got the shirt after Catholic Boot Camp started and needed it finished before Friday.

Next I unpicked the neck trim and lowered the front neckline, reattaching the neck trim just like in this earlier post. I hate how it turned out! I must learn to use a shorter piece of trim and stretch it out more. Sigh. I was rushed.

If I was really pregnant and didn't just look pregnant, I'd have loved it. But the long length made it look like such a cute maternity top that I needed to shorten it to look more like a traditional t-shirt length. New problem. I was having a terrible time with my top thread tension. After checking my instruction book and finding nothing, I remembered a long ago experience with the same thing, and that was a thread problem. I switched threads, and sure enough, no problem. That solved everything but my top stitching problems since I was using a thread that no longer matched. I had no time to go to the store. I was afraid to use a double needle with the bad matching thread, so I went ahead and used a single needle. The thread tension pulled through OK, but it looks so "home made," in a bad way. GRRRR. I was rushed.

So what did I learn this week? God is good and gives me all I need to flourish; the first thing to go when I get busy is exercise; I love to sew for fun, but never on things that have a dead line! Oh yea, I knew all that already.

Sew much fabric, sew little time

I've not been sewing because I am teaching Faith Formation at church next week. It's like Vacation Bible School, only I'm Catholic, so we call it Faith Formation. I'll be teaching fourth graders. I've been getting ready. After that, I have three weeks until school starts, and I plan to sew up a storm!

5K update: I am doing 30 minutes on the elliptical machine now, covering 2.25 miles. That's about a 13 minute mile. Bad news, though. I didn't exercise Thursday or Saturday. I was busy with other things, but that's how it starts. One day slips into two, then a week.

During Faith Formation week, my goal is to work out at least three times. That seems like a realistic goal. I'll report my stats. There, now I have to be accountable.

No Sisters, No Daughters

I live in a boy world. Always have. I have two brothers and two sons. The only close female relative that I have is the one required by nature -- a mom. I always thought of myself as a bit of a tomboy, so I was surprised when a friend mentioned that I was such a "girly-girl" in spite of my male surroundings. Her comment made me start to notice. Somewhere between being determined not to let my older brothers get the better of me and raising my sons into fine young men, I've adopted all the trappings of femininity. It's not that I mind, it's just that I didn't notice it happen.

I hate T-shits. I won't wear them if I can avoid them. I hate two things about them: the choking necklines and the boy sleeves.

Starting with a standard T-shirt, I lowered the neckline and made girl sleeves. I didn't have a pattern to follow, so I just hacked the sleeves off. I cut the T-shirt body along the curve of my body to make an armscye. Then I just cut the sleeve to look like a fitted sleeve. I left the underarm seam and hem and basted the sleeve into the armscye in the round. I needed to be more daring, so I unbasted and took off some more fabric, making a more pronounced curve between the sleeve cap and underarm seam.

The picture makes the sleeves look crooked, but I ran upstairs and tried the T-shirt on in a panic, and it's just the picture, not the shirt. I'd take another picture, but I'd rather sew, so I'll leave it at that.

For the neckline, I removed the trim by unpicking the seam, cut the rib in half longways, then sewed two of the short ends together. I measured how much I'd need, cut it, and sewed the other two short ends together. I folded it in half longways, pressed, and sewed it to the new, lowered neckline. Then I top stitched it to the seam allowance. The rib trim is now half the width of the original, but lowering the neckline created the need for a longer length, which I got by cutting it in half.

Ha! No one around here ever borrows my clothes. My dastardly plan is working!

Oops!

I accidentally made a pair of dress pants. If you don't know how someone could accidentally sew something, imagine you are at a party, don't plan to eat dessert, but someone places some cheesecake right in front of you. A little later, you notice it's gone. You've accidentally eaten it.

Sewing is just as tempting.

Although I started my first post by saying that I was on an exercise clothes sewing jag, I was interrupted by the need to figure out how to start a blog, use my camera, store and upload pictures, etc. In the meantime, I needed some sewing to do to relax between learning new things. Before I knew it, I'd made pair of pants, sans photos of process. I'm a good sewer, bad blogger.

I won't go into detail on this pair. They are made from a modification of a pants pattern whose original identity is long gone. The pattern had an elastic waist. I took out the gather room with curved seams and darts and added a back zipper for this pair. They have multiple fitting problems under the blouse. I'll be making more in the fall and I'll give more info then as I modify the pattern.

I used a rayon/poly blend from Joann's, but they feel awfully hot, more than the poly content led me to anticipate back when I remembered what it was. Oh well, as a wearable muslin of my new adaptation of this pattern, they are OK. I'd wear them to work if I was in a bad mood.

5K Update and Goals

Since I decided to run in a 5K, I have done physical activity every day for eight straight days. That's exactly what I was hoping the commitment would motivated me to do.

I am working out at the YMCA on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Right now I do a seven minute warm up on the rowing machine, 25 minutes on the elliptical machine, and use the FitLinxx machines to do weight training. Today I had my first Women's Free Weight Training class. It went well. There are three more classes, so my goal next week is to try each of the exercises that I was taught at least once before the next class.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I will try an "active lifestyle" activity. For instance, this past Thursday I did 25 minutes of skipping in my back yard pool, since it was hot and humid. I started out water walking, but found skipping more fun and challenging. I might walk the dog, go for a bike ride, or take a short run.

On Saturdays and Sundays I will walk and/or run around the four mile block near my house as fast as I can. I found out last weekend that I can walk it in one hour and sixteen minutes. I'd like to work up to running part of it, then slowly running more and walking less. I don't really have any concrete goals on that right now, since I really don't know what's realistic. I'll just have to keep moving and see what I discover.

When school starts, this will all change. I teach, so my kids and I are home for the summer. Once we all go back to school, we'll adapt. I work part time, so I can be done at 3 PM. When DS #1 has to work, I'll pick up both boys, take one to work, and walk in the neighborhood. On non-DS#1 work days, I'll pick up both boys and go right to the YMCA. We'll all work out and then go home.

OK, those are my goals. If I stick with this, I'll need all new clothes, clothes to work out in, clothes for the race, clothes to wear to work cause I'll be thinner, clothes to wear around since I'm thinner. Woo Hoo!

My First Post

Right now I’m on a fitness clothes sewing jag. I’ve decided to run in a 5K race next summer. It’s next summer, not this summer, because I need a whole year to get in shape!

My goal is to be in the race and cross the finish line. I might walk all or part of it, but I’ll do it with one full year’s worth of training to be my own personal best. Whatever that creates for me, I’ll celebrate it after I cross the finish line. I hope to lose a few pounds in the process, but it would only take 20 pounds for me to be extremely happy. I’m really not that motivated to be thin, just thinner. I don’t want to stay disproportionally "hippy." My disproportionate hips interfere with my sewing happiness.

This is me in my favorite green exercise pants, which I bought.

When my family joined the YMCA, I bought three pairs of work-out pants. I ended up hating two of them. One pair shrunk, and I just couldn’t get used to the short length. I tried to think "capris, capris," but it just didn’t work for me. The other pair was heavy fleece, and I found myself always pulling out the green pair and passing up the fleece pair. I hate to be hot, and the green pair is made of a thinner cotton interlock.

When I decided to get in shape for the 5K, I knew I needed work out clothes. I needed to eliminate one more excuse not to work out, and not having a clean set of work out clothes that I like is a great excuse! Works every time. Rather than get frustrated with purchased pants again, I decided to copy my green pants. It worked well. I did not take pictures as I went along, since I was only just beginning to think about a sewing blog, but I will on future projects.

















Here I am in my first pair of black yoga pants.


I used a poly/cotton blend from Joann’s. I copied the pattern by putting the green pants on my cutting/ironing table.















It’s a buffet table that I made an ironing board cover for. I only use it to iron large cuts of fabric before I cut out. For ironing everything else, I use my regular ironing board. I poked pins through the fabric along the seam lines. Then I took off the ironing board cover and placed the tracing paper on the table. I drew lines along the pin holes, then added very generous seam allowances. The legs looked very crooked. I was stumped, as the green pants looked straight and I poked my holes very carefully, but I trusted my instincts and straightened up the legs to look like all those pants tissues I’ve used. Turned out to be a good gut instinct. The legs on the finished pants are very straight.

The first pair were a bit big. Since I have a history of sadly growing out of my favorite clothes, I tend to over compensate and make things too big. I’d still rather end up with something too big than too small. The casing was also way too big for my ¾ inch elastic. On the pattern, I took in about four inches and measured the casing and bought 1 ¼ inch elastic for the next pair.

I originally planned two white stripes for the second pair, but after I sewed on the first stripe, I was worried that the second stripe would show any slight crookedness and that I should leave well enough alone. Then I realized that I think I have enough black fabric and trim left over to make a third black pair. We’ll see.




















I used a stiff interfacing inside the hem before I used a ball point 4 mm double needle. One the second pair I forgot to use the interfacing. It looked so much worse that I removed the stitching and redid it with the interfacing. So far both have washed nicely and maintained a neat look.

They have one fitting problem. The center crease rolls in when I sit down. This is a problem with all my pants I make. I’m not sure what to do about this, but I am continuing my exploration of pants making, and I will be dealing with this more aggressively in the future.

The photo looks grey, but they are black. I couldn't figure out how to make the photo come out black!




Then I went out and bought the brown poly/cotton interlock. The brown fabric has been washed and dried twice. I bought 2 5/8 yards each time and they all shrunk to 2 3/8 yards. The brown is waiting to be cut out. This time I bought the matching rib knit trim and two inch elastic. I’ll need to modify the pattern a bit.

For the brown pair I’ve realized that I need to add a loop to hold my YMCA locker key. I use a large safety pin to pin my locker key to my pants while I work out. The first day at the gym in my new pants, I panicked as I realized that I had a sharp point pin for knit pants. I paused in horror as only a sewer with multiple sets of clearly labeled pins would do.



I quickly envisioned a loop sewn into the waistband seam in the next pair, jammed the pin in the fabric, and thought, "Guess I’ll have to make some new ones."