Nice and cool culottes for the warm summer weather.
I wanted some more of these culottes but this time non-stretch, so that they wouldn’t almost fall down when I stick too much in the pockets. So I looked in the hoard and found a bit of the blue fabric I also used for these pants and for a mock-up of another pair of pants. I found the original pattern, cut it out with a bit more crotch depth, freehanded some pockets and pocket openings on the front and set out to sew it together.
This fabric frays fairly easily, so I attempted to French seam it together. This worked remarkably well. I even managed to French seam the side from the zipper down. The zipper was an invisible zip and went in pretty smoothly. I cut the waistband just a little bit too short, which is why there’s a little extra tab on that side. I also added a little snap to keep the overlap to sit flat.
When all but the hem was done, I let it hang overnight so that it could get all the bias stretch out. When I pulled it back on to see if the hem was level enough to sew, I found out that it wasn’t. This wasn’t really surprising, I always have to cut the front down to match the back. It was hemmed with bias tape, which was so much easier than trying to double fold it. The final detail was to add a little d-ring on a ribbon so I can hang my keys. All in all, pretty nice for not too much work!
There is no clothing as fun as pants masquerading as a skirt!
A couple of weeks ago on Friday, the first in-person graduation at work took place. The first thing I made was a bit.. too much.. so with three or so days to spare, I set out on a new plan. On the original trip to the Rotterdam market, I’d purchased some plaid on white stretch something. I liked the colours and decided that would be the fabric for this outfit. The other decision I’d already made was that I wanted some sort of fake-pants. I’d made an attempt at the Petit Main Sauvage Culottes in 2018 and decided to give that a go again.
I followed the instructions for a knee length version and promptly went to cutting it out. While trying to get my pattern placement symmetrical, I determined that the fabric had the plaid printed, but that it was printed quite crookedly on one side of the fabric. That lead to some challenges with grain lines etc, but really, what did I expect from fabric that was probably 1-2 euro per meter. The culottes were cut from the ‘straighter’ side of the fabric while I waited for inspiration to strike about the top of the outfit I was trying to make.
In the end, I settled on a tried and mostly true pattern for the top. The Garden Party dress. I grabbed the tulip sleeve pieces that I used for the combo dress and got to work. A nice, somewhat scooped neckline, but not too low because of the 30℃ weather prediction, and no closures (I love stretch). The culottes had some added pockets because running a big event without pockets is not a good idea. The one thing I was left with was the waistband/s. I hadn’t made a plan for that yet. You see, I needed the culottes to be one piece as they needed to come off downwards and I wanted to be able to wear them by themselves. However, the total outfit needed to look like a dress, if possible.
I decided to draft a waistband with a point at the front for the culottes. After sewing it on, it gaped like no tomorrow. I hoped that the application of some laundry would help relax the stitches so I chucked it in the wash (it was Wednesday by now, 2 days to go). Thursday came, the outfit was dried and it hadn’t helped at all. So I unpicked the waistband from the skirt, turned it around and applied it to the top. That looked a lot better! I still had some black mesh laying around from the cover up attempt and made a thin waistband from that for the skirt with some added elastic to hopefully keep the skirt up.
All in all, for such an improvised project, I was very happy with how it turned out. I like the colours, I like plaid, I like how I managed to plaid match along the side seams of the culottes. The thing I should have done was applying snaps so that the top and the skirt could stay together, but I never got round to that, so on the day, I just tugged the culottes up and the top down whenever it felt like the gap was too large. I have no doubts that I will wear those culottes when the weather is good. They are comfortable, prevent chafing but allow a breeze. I’m definitely on team Secret Pants!
At some point I found an old blog post from Petit Main Sauvage about half-circle culottes. I had just bought quite a length of blue fabric with ivy leaves on and figured this would be the perfect time to create full length half circle culottes following the tutorial. So did just that. I also wanted to add some straps to both combat stretching from the waist being on the bias and because I like dungaree type things. Initially the idea was to make a full apron top-thing, but that looked ridiculous so it was scrapped.
I’d finished most of it in January, but then it needed hemming and I sort of chucked it in the corner until I could find the courage to do that. So it took me until May to find that courage. I had most of the straps already sewn, but I needed an attachment method. I finally decided on a cross-strap option with elastic in the middle. Attached to the pants with buttons on the inside. Once I had it finished, I took it out for a short jaunt to the shops. I discovered that the straps needed some shortening and the facing attached more soundly to the inside of the pants, so I made another button-hole and managed to fix those problems.
Now, I just need to find occasions to wear this. I think they might be quite comfortable in summer because you can get quite a nice breeze going. We’ll see how that goes.\
Active filters:
Category
Tag
Post Type
·
No results found. Try a different search.
No results match these filters. Try clearing some, or searching for something else.
No results match these filters. Try clearing some, or searching for something else.
