KnipMode 2017/12-10 Culotte

Yesterday I finally finished the culotte on which I have been working on and off for a few weeks now and that has been on my sewing-wishlist for quite some time. In fact it has been there ever since this pattern was published in December 2017.

The fabric I bought at a fabric market and at the time I forgot to ask what kind of fabric it is but I’m pretty sure there’s polyester in it. (I should do the ‘burn-test’!) The weight is heavy and that's a very good thing for this design, because it elongates the pleats in the front which makes all that extra width stay in place.

The original design has a paperbag-waist. I would never wear it like that (don’t need all that extra bulk at my waist) and decided to eliminate the piece above the waistline.  It’s a loose fitting design (and very comfortable to wear!) so I could get away with my normal size 46 and had to add just a little bit at the sideseams at the waist. I didn’t make the fabric tie belt either. I’ll be using a small store-bought belt and made the beltloops accordingly small so the belt stays in place and doesn’t shift upwards.

When I thought I had completed this project without too many hickups,  I encountered a problem. After hemming the legs, the sideseams were pulling up. When I laid them flat they didn’t, but once I put them on and looked down….yikes!

At first I thought maybe I eased one side of the seam in a bit. I usually pin beginning and end of a seam together and then pin in between, so If one side is a tiny bit longer than the other, you hardly notice that you are gathering one side of the seam. It seemed logical that this would be the cause of that pulling. I opened up the sideseams for about 2/3 of the length and closed them again, now pinning from the top to the bottom, expecting to find that one side would turn out longer than the other. But it didn’t. Don’t ask me how but after this there wás some improvement, so I gave it a good press and at least now it’s wearable. Ah well, probably no-one will notice.

Although this style is very out of my comfortzone, I like it a lot. It reminds me of a pair of 7/8 length summertrousers I made when I was a teen. If I remember correctly it had 6 (!)  pleats at the waist and was tapered at the bottom. It was made of a light-yellow cotton and I lóved it and felt very special in it.  In my defence: it was the beginning of the 80’s and wide trousers were the thing to wear, right?

There are more culottes on my wishlist but they will be for summer.

Now….wish me luck stepping out of my comfortzone and wearing these to work…..

Talk to you soon.

Lilian