The Late Night Sewist

This being the longest winter after seven years of living on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, I could easily switch to summer right now. Instead, we have a wonderful winter weather today here in Estonia, very appropriate for our Independence Day.

And I have completed a pair of summer pants in anticipation of my favourite season in Estonia. I just felt I needed a change in the battle against my Stardust Coat that is still in process, although thankfully it looks promising already.

I hope to make an update on the process in near future, but for now, here are the Princess Jasmine Pants:

Now that I think of it, it is pretty funny that I made a Wilma Flintsone Dress in summer. Maybe while others draw their inspiration from the latest catwalks, mine subconsciously comes from cartoons?

The pattern is from Patrones No. 316, that I ordered a while ago because of some great jumpsuit patterns this issue contains. But I started with those baggy pants instead, just because I happened to have the suitable fabric in my stash. The fabric is some kind of cotton blend, quite lightweight and at first I thought to make it into a dress.

The pants are low-rise and really baggy, with six decorative metallic buttons in front and 3 at both ankle cuffs. There is an invisible zipper on the left hip and the pattern originally calls for pockets that I omitted. The pattern is model No 10 in Patrones No 316:

As I was cutting the pieces out, I realized that it was impossible to cut the legs in one piece because of the amount of fabric I had. After a lot of brainstorming I decided I can live with horizontal seams on the backside of the pant legs. In the end I even topstitched the connecting seams with pink thread to pretend that it was intentional. This gave me the idea to topstitch in the first place. I was thinking to use the traditional thick orange thread used for  jeans topstitching but then changed my mind and went with a bit unconventional pink.

I love the buttons I found, although the twelve of them cost me more than the fabric and other notions together! They come in silver as well and you will probably see the silver version on a certain coat soon 😉

I am quite proud of lining the sides up so well, but not so proud of the pink zipper slightly showing, although it is invisible. I just couldn’t resist using a pink zipper as I wanted the zipper pull to add to the pink topstitching. With a good ironing though, the zipper shows much less, so I am going to keep it as it is.

It is marked as “costura facil”, meaning it is an easy pattern to sew and I quite agree. The reason why it took me longer than it should have, is that I used bias tape (pink!) to finish all the seam allowances and lately I only sew in the weekends.

As with my Patrones shorts, the fit is very good, I cut Patrones size 42 and I didn’t have to make any major alterations to the pattern. Although I don’t exactly feel like a princess in them, I think I will enjoy wearing these easygoing pants very much this summer!

As nearly all my summer shoes are still in Athens, I have no shoes to show you today!  However, I don’t think I would match these pants with high heels as modeled in Patrones mag.

Happy sewing and Happy Independence Day to all Estonians!