New Active Wear

It's been about 2 years now since I've done exercise for any solid length of time.  I've tried getting back into running a couple of times and whilst it felt good at the time it never seemed to last more than 2 weeks or so.  I cancelled my gym membership a while ago as I just wasn't feeling it and I just didn't know what I wanted to do.

Then, whilst looking up activities for my kids to do I found a local ninja warrior gym which offered beginner adult classes and decided I was just going to go for it.

I went to my first session 3 weeks ago and I love it!  I've managed to get up the 10 foot warped wall and whilst my upper body strength is still really lacking I can feel it getting a bit better.

But the main problem that I have is what to wear.  Most of my good workout clothes were bought when I was actually working out and smaller than I am now....so obviously it was time to get onto making again.

I've attempted to make active wear a couple of times in the past.  I've made a couple of plain cotton T-shirts that are just so blah that I couldn't bring myself to blog them.  One really great T-shirt in a cityscape fabric that I love

And a pair of knee length leggings with gusset that are a smidge too small but now I wanted to try and get a couple of patterns that would really work.

I started with leggings.  After researching leggings patterns I found Jalie's Clara leggings.  I really liked the idea of no front seam and so I started drafting.  I created a pattern that had a no front seam, no outer seam, a large gusset and a wide waistband.  It took quite a few iterations to get all the pieces sitting correctly and it's still not perfect but it's pretty good.

I made this pair of leggings out of a piece of navy blue, heavy weight jersey I had in my stash.  I only had 1 yard of this material and I used just about all of it - especially after having to recut the gusset at least 3 times.  I had a lot of other plans for these pants  a double layer waistband with a pocket in the back -  but in the end I decided to take a few shortcuts so I could get them finished and try them out.  I kept the waistband single layer and just serged a piece of 1.5"wide elastic to the top of the waistband and turned it to the inside.

After wearing these once I realised that the gusset didn't sit quite right - it needed to be stretched a little further.  The waistband wasn't quite tight enough so they still fell down a bit.  There is also a bit of extra length along where the outside seam should be, which results in some wrinkles under the bum.  But otherwise they were not bad.

For my second attempt I wanted to use a piece of active wear fabric in black with a diamond pattern on it that I had in stash but I had forgotten that I had already used a lot of it and there wasn't a full yard left so instead I decided to modify the pattern to include a contrasting strip down the outside of the leg.  I first modified the gusset placement extending it further down the inseam so it's a bit more stretched.  I then cut along the outside seam and used the slash and overlap technique to take about 3/4"out of the length of the outer seam at about crotch level.  I then took 2"off  of both the back and front pieces to create a 4"wide strip down the outside of the leg.

I cut the front and back pieces out of the black diamond pattern fabric.  I had to add a yoke on the back due to fabric limitations. I then used some heavy weight purple active wear fabric for the side strips.  I managed to eek the waistband out of the black fabric scraps.  I added pockets into the side stripes by cutting a second layer of the strip and a pocket bag out of lightweight spandex fabric.  I cut off the top layer at the height of the pocket opening and sewed on the pocket bag then cut the bottom layer off at the bottom of the pocket bag.  The resulting three layer piece was then inserted into the side seams together.

 Somehow - due to the stretch of the fabrics - these pants ended up really tight.  I also cut less height off the waistband on these and cut the top elastic tight so these actually stay where they are supposed it - even if they are very hard to get on.

For both these pair of pants, once I was happy with each seam I ran it through the overlocker (serger) then top stitched it down with a zig zag stitch.

Now that I was sort of happy with my pants pattern  - Though I think I still need one ore iteratino before its perfect....I decided to turn to the top half.  I really liked the look of the Jalie Pika top and wanted to try my hand at a top that worked as a crop top as well as normal tank top.

I started with my latest bra pattern.  The back is exactly the same but I extended the straps up about an inch. 

For the front I decided to get rid of the bridge and added that onto the two bra cup pieces, the final modification was to create the rounded front strap. I  cut a trial pattern out of the purple activewear fabric I used on the pants, basted it all together and loved it.  It was the perfect crop top.

I was however hoping I could get away with wearing it without any bra underneath it. To try ang give it the support it would need I used my original bra pattern from last year to create a new woven cotton bra and basted it underneath the crop top, but try as I might I couldn't get them to sit nicely so after an afternoon of trying to get it to work I gave up and just made the top as a crop top to go over another bra. I finished the neckline and arm holes with 3/8 wide elastic basted on the inside and then turned under and top stitched.  The bottom was finished with 1.5"wide elastic.

Now that I was happy with the crop top portion I wanted to try and make it into a top.   

 I used the same purple fabric for the basis of the crop top then cut a second layer out of a light weight teal poly/lycra fabric as a lining.  After basting it together I cut a front and back tank piece out of the teal fabric.  This was pretty much a draping exercise.  I cut two rectangles and then trimmed them down to the shape I wanted front and back.   I attached the front teal piece between the rounded strap  and bra cups .

And the back piece at a single point at the back V. Once I was happy I took it apart to make a pattern out of then sewed it all back together finishing the edges by simply turning it twice and stitching using a zig zag stitch.  The biggest issue was getting the gathering right at the center front.  I'm not totally happy with it but it's as good as I could get it.

The final piece was to add a 5"wide band of the heavyweight purple to the bottom of the crop top and a folded 2.5" band to the bottom of the teal.

After wearing it once I've found that the lower band needs to be longer - at the length it is now it just rolls up and is annoying.  Other than that this top works great.  I probably still need at least one more top and I'd like to try one more time on the pants but this is a good start.