I gave you a sneak peek of these yesterday, but I doubt any of you were looking at the leggings!! You’re forgiven, though!
This design is from the third Pattern Magic book, and was super easy for me because I didn’t have to draft anything! I already had a great legging pattern to start with, from an old KnipMode magazine I’ve made a few times before. Note that you need a legging pattern with separate front and back pieces, so the two recent Burda magazine leggings (in the June and January 2012 issues if I remember correctly) won’t work as a starting point. Or you can just draft one from scratch as the book suggests.
All the work here is in the measuring, slicing, and spreading of the pattern pieces – I very cleverly wrote the size of the spread between each of the pieces, so when it came time to do the other pattern piece, I could easily make it the same amount so everything matched up.
I’m leaning, like the book’s pose!
I was going to make these out of the same purple jersey I made the starburst skirt from last week, but I was a few inches short. Note that this pattern requires 150cm wide fabric, and mine only just barely fit onto that, so keep that in mind when you’re purchasing!
Since I didn’t have anything in the stash, I stopped in at Bhopal Fabrics on Brick Lane on my walk home on Thursday and asked the proprietress to see her lycra jerseys, and this red called to me (and not just because I’ve already got my overlocker and coverstitch threaded in red!!). It cost me a cool £5 total, ha!
Once you’ve got past the pattern manipulation, these are just as easy to sew as regular leggings – I even finished the waistband of these using my usual elastic waist technique! These were so quick to sew that I bought the fabric on my way home on Thursday, then cut and sewed them in an evening and wore them to work the next day!
The only issue with these is that they’ve got ZERO hanger appeal – don’t they look weird hanging up? I also find that they’re a bit tricky to put on, so I need to scrunch up the leg with my hands first, like I do putting tights on, so that the side seams stay nicely aligned. But that’s pretty much it – super comfortable, and a nice twist on the basic leggings you see everywhere!