This is the first proper garment from my haul of fabrics from the Interview with the Vampire props auction in March! I made two small projects out of some scraps, but they weren’t really big enough for a post, so they’ll likely get rolled into a Miscellaneous post at some point.
Once I got those two quick scrap oprojects out of the way, I got it in my head to tackle the most challenging of the fabrics first!
It’s a pale blue linen/cotton (a burn test seems to think it’s mostly linen?) heavy weight chambray, that has a little slub effect and is surprisingly robust. When I was turning the waist ties the fabric was shredding SO badly, but was also tough enough to withstand me literally pulling it through with pliers!
But it such an oddly shaped piece so therefore should be my biggest Fabric Tetris challenge from the whole haul. And I conquered it! But seriously, the fabric shape was utterly bonkers (the “legs” are much longer than I drew here).
I knew I wanted to make summer trousers from it, if I could manage to fit them into the fabric shape. So I browsed through my archive of Burda patterns and found Burda 04/2024 #112. This pattern has an interesting mix of casual and more formal trouser elements – it’s got a fly front zipper, angled front pockets, and back welt pockets, but also a drawstring waist and cargo pockets on one of the views. The leg shape is something between a straight leg and a wide leg, and it’s high waisted, with a faced finish instead of an attached waistband (are we sensing a theme with my recent trouser makes??).
I made a few changes to the pockets, just for personal preference – I don’t really like back welt pockets so I changed these to jeans-style patch pockets, and I used a pleated cargo pocket from a different pair of Burda trousers to make these more-cargo and less-patch pockets on the legs.
But back to my Fabric Tetris – I originally tried to fit the Front and Back into the folded section, which was just barely long enough, but 1-2cm too narrow. Boo. So I had to unpin everything and take a different approach. This time I placed the two long and narrow sections together and cut the Front trouser pieces from those. Then I nearly fit the Back out of the folded central area, but ultimately it was about 15cm too short so I needed to piece the bottom of the Back leg. C’est la vie!
I was gifted some small scraps of a blue jacquard fabric from a Bluesky friend, who said this is the fabric that covers the walls at the Estates Theatre in Prague (if you click through you can see the fabric in the official photos!). It’s a very famous, historic theatre in its own right, but it was also used as the filming location for the 18th century theatre flashbacks in S2 of Interview with the Vampire so it seemed fitting to use it for the pocket linings and facings here.
The instructions were illustrated, but the choices for which steps got an illustration were frankly bizarre – some very easy and straightforward steps were illustrated, but really complex and unusual methods got nothing.
Case in point – the construction of the fly front with a facing instead of an attached waistband was something that really tripped me up on the lavender trousers so I was determined to muddle through Burda’s instructions on this pair to learn how they approached it.
The entire fly front and facing construction was a single step, in one behemoth paragraph which had multiple occurrences of incomplete sentences totally absent of any verbs:
I nearly had a tantrum when my Right Facing ended up being an inch too short for the top of the trousers and I couldn’t figure out wtf Burda were trying to say (and of course there wasn’t an illustration for this part!! Thank god they illustrated joining the top of the facing to the top of the trousers though 🙄). So I had to put it down and walk away for a while, and eventually I figured out what they wanted me to do: join the short end of the right facing to the vertical edge of the fly facing, then re fold it so the fly facing wraps around to fill in the gap, then sew the top of the trousers together!!
And yet “sew a buttonhole” got a separate step and illustration. 😒 Speaking of buttons though, sewing the button onto the fly underlap of all places is truly bizarre, but there’s really nowhere else to put it I guess? But no wonder I couldn’t fathom what they intended in the lavender trouser’s un-illustrated instructions… Anyway, I opted to use a trouser hook inside rather than a button to make it a cleaner look.
The waist feels a little snug right now, but I’ve still got 4 more kilos to lose so that should be a problem that’s going away. I’m also pleased that I can fit into my well loved summer clothes for the first time since 2023 – in these photos I’m wearing one of the Made It “Rest Vest” patterns I made that summer, and it’s the perfect partner for these trousers.
It’s also great that there are SIX big pockets on these trousers!! Unheard of, unless you’re sewing a FehrTrade pattern, of course!
I absolutely love the feel of these – high waisted with a slightly wide leg that just feels casual rather than like I’m drowning in them. The whole vibe of these feels very “holiday in a hot country” and I adore them.
I’m so pleased I was able to create a pair of trousers I love from two extremely weird and limiting pieces of fabric that mean a lot to me! And with only a small amount of piecing required.
In a nice bit of timing, I’ve managed to finish these just as season three of the show (now titled “The Vampire Lestat”) hits our screens, after two years of waiting! (Though really, I’ve been waiting over 30 years to see this book on screen!) Very happy days!!