Sewing Slim Pants and Leggings from HP DV Cigarette Pants

I have so neglected this blog! I’ve been sewing up a storm but I swear, I can’t get good photos if my life depended on it. And I’m feeling kind of well, maybe the word is lazy about modeling and photography and cropping and uploading so I’m gonna do this quick just to get it done:

After the fun with the new Vogue 1132 pattern that I blogged about at The Sewing Divas,

I had the pants pattern left to try so I did try it, after making my usual alterations and found it was, well, totally boring and uninspiring. The leg shape is wide and too full. I used some gray/black stretch cotton with black and pink threads running down in a pinstrip-y sort of fashion and some black fabric with primary colored threads running down in it a preschool sort of pin strip-y fashion. Two pairs of serviceable day-to-day pants that I needed for this late summer. But not terribly exciting and fun.

I wanted well-drafted slim pants, the look that is so popular for this Fall so I turned to Hot Pattern’s Cigarette Pants. Ahhhhhh! Much more bedda! The circumference of the leg of this pattern is 14.5″.

And got these in a stretch fabric

And then these, cut a little bit more slim (This is a cool beige and denim blue cotton lycra fabric from Bill Blass…)

I have to redo the left pant leg as it is not exactly cut. Just a tiny cutting error can put the leg in a twist.

But I had become a woman on a mission, not even a twisted leg could stop me and shortly I devised a pattern for leggings by taking my measurements and taping my Hot Patterns Deco Vibe Cigarette Pants tracings together to make a one-seam pattern

and then tracing that off onto its own pattern piece. The top is extended to make an elastic waistband.

I refined the fit as I serged up the 2 pieces until I had this shape and compared it to the original pattern

I used a very stretchy beefy poly lycra fabric purchased too long ago to remember the source and tried serging first on the commercial Merrow but that produced wavy seams. You can see that in the crotch seam. I found the regular serger was much better because it allowed a feed differential compatible with stretch fabrics.

I next cut into that wonderful stretch lace I showed here in the Leggings post in July from GorgeousFabrics where Ann is having a sale on her stretch fabrics at the moment.

but this fabric didn’t have the stretch of the poly lycra and holes developed. I’ll have to re-cut this pair of leggings. Fortunately I bought enough yardage to play with.

They are quite a bit more pink in the wearing than what I had expected. Maybe cut with more ease the black and silver will be more visible.

Here’s the black poly lycra leggings. The bottoms are not hemmed, just turned turned up.

As you can see, I had to make a tunic to wear with the leggings but that’s a whole ‘nother story for a different day…!