Lime Green Velour Wrap Pants.

Recently one of my favourite community forums started up an informal sew along, so of course I had to join in.

There were three sewing patterns to choose from.  I chose the wrap pants as they sounded quite interesting, and not something I'd normally try.  It's always nice to step outside your comfort level and try new things

The tutorial that we were to follow was:

https://laupre.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/easy-breezy-wrap-pants-tutorial/

As I limited myself to using stash fabric for this project I didn't have a lot of choice, this pattern uses quite a bit of fabric and most of my stash is in smaller pieces these days.  My original thought was to do them in fleece for a pair of super comfy cosy lounge pants, but once I realised just how much fabric was used I decided that they would probably end up way too bulky.

Then I found some lime green velour that I bought a while ago to make a costume for my daughter..Mmmm lime green velour wrap pants - who wouldn't want a pair of those.



The next problem was I didn't have quite enough fabric.  I needed two pieces of fabric approximately 55" x 41".   I had two pieces of 35" x 41", and managed to squeeze out two pieces of  15" x 36".  Sewn together that gave two pieces of about 50" x 41", with a chunk out of one corner.  Thankfully most of this chunk is obscured by the way the fabric wraps around the legs, so it's not too bad.  You can just see a small section at the back where the fabric is too short.



I cut out the crotch area and sewed the two pieces together around the crotch.  The next step was supposed to be finish off all the edges, but since I'm not planning on wearing these out of the house, and the velour fabric doesn't fray I skipped that step.

To finish off  The tutorial said tI had to put in a waist band. o just fold over the top edge of the fabric and attach the ties at each end, but as my fabric is stretchy I needed some stabilisation around the waist.  To do this I ran the ribbon that I was using for my ties right along the top edge.

Starting with the center of the ribbon at the back of the waistband I turned the fabric over the ribbon  about 1/4 inch and used a zig zag stitich to stitch the fabric to the ribbon.  I then turned the ribbon over again and ran a straight stitch along the top of the fold encasing the ribbon into the waistband.

I didn't want to have to tie both layers of my pants on, and figured that all those bows could end up quite uncomfortable around the waist, so instead for the inner layer I  put a snap on either end of the fabric and cut the ribbon short.



Overall they're a cute pair of lounge around the house pants.  It ended up taking me two evening to sew them, but mainly because I spent some time playing around with other options for the waistband.  In the end I decided to pretty much stick with the tutorial so all that time was wasted anyway.

          

Would I ever make these again? - you know I just might, they make quite a nice pair of wide legged pants.  In a really lightweight cotton or linen I think these would make a great pair of summer pants for when you want to be covered,  but not hot....