The Late Night Sewist

Although I mainly prefer to sew dresses, I got very much inspired by one of the most interesting sewing bloggers, Erica B.  She made a pair of trousers recently, that I loved instantly and after taking a look around at some shops I realized I can make my own at a fraction of the price. At first I liked these Mango snake print pants a lot, but I had already bought a top with a similar print on it and I didn´t manage to find a suitable fabric here in Tartu, either.

Although Erica B. and Mango had opted for an elastic waist, I decided to try out a proper fly closing for my trousers.

The pattern I used is Burda February 2012 issue, model 103B:

In Estonia there is a very simple solution for finding Burda, Diana Moden, Ottobre and some other sewing magazine patterns with zero cost – they are available at most libraries and one can take the magazines home for tracing for 7 days at a time, unlimited amount of issues, free of any charge, only a registration at the library is required. I only wish I had such an opportunity in Greece as well, but I haven´t heard of it so far.

The reason why I mention this here is that although I have this February issue in Athens, I wanted to use the pattern now, being in Estonia and at that moment I was only able to find the Russian edition of Burda magazine at the library – they had given out the English one. So I traced the pattern, but I was pretty concerned about my ability to insert the fly with my poor Russian and the notorious Burda instructions.

Instead of getting myself into trouble, I googled around and came across this video tutorial. Another link to the same think is here. Probably a lot of sewists have seen it already, but it is simply amazing, or amazingly simple way of inserting a fly without any stress.

Here are my trousers:

The pattern was very easy to work with and I didn´t need to make  any alterations, apart from omitting the pockets. The zippers in the side seams were actually unnecessary, because the legs were wide enough, but as I had bought them already, I decided to use them anyway.

The fabric is synthetic charmeuse, very thin and slippery. I normally just zig-zag the seam allowances, but in this case it was impossible, because the fabric was fraying and it didn´t look nice. So, as I have been admiring the perfection of Amanda S.  garments and especially the amazing finishing on the inside, I decided for the first time to use bias tape for the seam allowances. I am so happy with the result, that I will probably start doing it on all of my clothes. It just looks so clean and neat!

So, thanks to some fantastic bloggers and hobby sewists, I got myself a pair of trousers that I am really proud of! And if I add all the expences for fabric and notions, I think the total cost of these was about 10 euros. Not bad!