Wide girl trousers

With the kids away, I was determined to grab some sewing time.

The pair you see here are not in the material intended! I wanted to use black cavalry twill, but when I laid the pattern pieces out, it was clear that one metre was not enough. Talk about wide legs! This pattern (New Look 6190) has super-wide legs! The pieces wrapped round my 60-inch wide fabric - leaving nothing in reserve for the waistband. So I went back to my stash and extracted two metres of grey wool / lycra (97/3) mix, which I had intended for a swishy skirt from the same pattern.

The fabric is lovely - very soft, with just a touch of stretch. It is an almost-black charcoal in real life. The pattern includes plenty of "ease". I made a size 12 and I think it was the right choice: 10 would have fitted but these are not meant to "fit"!

The only tricky bit was avoiding catching the belt loops into the edge-stitching at the waistband. The side-seam zip was painless. I think I may have got over my fear of making trousers! Obviously I should have pressed the hem before I got FL to take a photo - oops!

My fear of home-made trousers is justifiable. When I was 11, my mother made me a pair of electric blue polyester knit trousers (it was the 70's - cut me some fashion slack, girls!). Unfortunately, she used the wrong needle for a knit fabric, and the stitching didn't "catch". But we didn't realise this until I wore them to school next day, sat down.... and ripped my trousers right round the crotch, exposing my navy M&S knickers to the whole class. OMG - the shame!

I double-stitched the seam of these, just in case!

P.S. If you want a pincushion like mine, keep an eye on Kate's blog. She is going to publish a tutorial soon!