Skinny Pant Goodness - Vogue 1378

You may recollect my excitement at some of the new Vogue patterns. Specifically the new Donna Karan seamed skinny pants.

The pattern arrived Thursday afternoon. I cut the pattern tissue Thursday evening. I cut the fabric Friday evening. I sewed most of the pants on Saturday. I would have finished, but I also ran to the fabric store, met a friend for a two-hour lunch, took a class at a local ribbon store, and finished reading the second of two books since Friday evening.

In other words, these pants are a fairly quick sew!

This pattern comes in sizes 4-20. (Thanks for the smaller sizes, Vogue!) I like a close fit so, even though my 34" hips indicate that I should sew a size 10, I cut out a size 6. The pattern calls for "rayon spandex or cotton spandex" and you need it to be somewhat stretchy. The envelope describes the pants like this:

Tapered, below waist (front) pants have seam detail, overlapped lower sides, and topstitching. Close fitting, no side seams.

The pants are constructed with lapped seams, so the raw edges show on the front. Therefore, you want a doubleknit for the pants, but it needs to have some stretch to it. Right now my stash is fairly low on bottom-weight double-knits, such as ponte, so I used my favorite fabric for testing pants, some black ponte. (And my stash on that is getting low, too!) I'm sorry that it is harder to see details in black.

Constructing the lapped seam

Besides the interesting seaming on these pants, the hem is interesting. There is a vertical opening on each leg. The opening is embellished with 4 rows of topstitching. If you wanted to sew these pants with conventional seams, you could do that, however there is one inset corner that would be a bit tricky. In an overlapped seam, this is very easy. (If you are comfortable with sewing inset corners, it would not present a problem.)

Constructing the lower leg
Completed legs

These pants have no side seams and no pockets.

I made no alterations to these pants, save two. First, I made a flat butt adjustment and shortened the crotch length. Second, I am 5'5" and they were quite long in the leg. They have a 1" hem; I cut off 3.5" from the bottom before finishing with the 1" hem. The resulting vertical opening is shorter, but it is fine. However, if you were much shorter than I am, you might want to remove at least some of the length from higher up, so you wouldn't lose the opening entirely.

I wore these out this morning and I am loving them! I do not want to take them off. I can see making them again, and maybe using regular seams. A great pattern!

I very much enjoyed the class I took at the ribbon store, though I was kind of all thumbs for quite a bit of it. Sandra Ericson, of Center for Pattern Design gave a class on creating woven beads. Sandra describes it as a Swedish technique (often done using birch bark ribbon) but it was very origami like. I need to practice more on some cheap paper before locating some nicer supplies. I hope to show you more later.

More Pictures

Is that a teal thread?
Got it!

Pattern