Following on from my Lestat lawyer blouse, you may have noticed the pleather trousers I wore with it… well these are another homage to Lestat in his rockstar phase in season 3 of Interview with the Vampire (now titled “The Vampire Lestat”, out next year).
I needed something to wear with the lawyer blouse for Halloween, but he’s sitting at a table in the footage so you can’t see what trousers he’s wearing. So I took artistic liberty and decided to sew some tight red trousers similar to ones seen on set and in the press photos.
I’ve had this stretch, matte, dark read pleather in my stash for quite a few years – I either got it from Girl Charlee UK (RIP) or New Craft house? To be honest, it was so long ago that I’m not really sure, and it predates both my current means of keeping track of my stash. But crucially, I only had 1 meter! It’s a lovely dark red that’s a lot more matte in real life than it appears in photos, and it’s got great stretch in both directions so is utterly perfect for tight-fitting trousers. I figured I’d draft something that fits tightly like leggings, but has the details of jeans/leather trousers.
I started with my “Sew Your Own Activewear” Compression fitting bottom block in size XL at the waist and L everywhere else. Then I added front jeans-style pockets with a pocket bag extending to the centre front, back jeans-style pockets, a faux fly, and narrow waistband. These are just be slip on so I didn’t bother with a functional fly or back yoke (but more on that later!).
Thankfully I have a fabric layout template in illustrator so I could lay all my pattern pieces on the folded 140cm x 1.0m fabric digitally first – and I’m glad I did because the pocket yoke wouldn’t fit into the fabric as I’d originally drafted! So I redrafted that to be mostly cut in lining fabric with just a patch of pleather on top that’s exposed.
I got this printed in A0 at Netprinter, and cut everything out, fitting perfectly like my digital mockup said it would!
I was thinking originally to make the pocket bags in stretch mesh to minimise lumps but then I realised I had scraps of Armand fabric on a stretch poly base and it was too funny to pass up!! I didn’t have quite enough of the Armand fabric to make all four pocket pieces so one is mostly white (unprinted), with blenders at the edge, but you still get Armand’s peeking out though the pockets!
Since the pleather cannot take any pressing with the iron (it would melt!), I used Wondertape to keep the folded edges of the back pockets in place long enough to topstitch them down. Thankfully this fabric is fine with pin holes or that would be another level of nightmare!
I made good use of my coverstitch machine here to get the jeans-style topstitching while still being stretchy. The coverstitching also keeps edges in place that can’t be pressed, like the front pocket edges. I researched how to turn corners with a coverstitch machine, but frankly, all the methods I found looked way worse than just overlapping the stitching so I just did the latter.
As I was sewing blind here without making a muslin first, I tried these on mid-sew more often than I usually would, and I’m glad I did, because I discovered that they were far too low rise at the back! To fix this, I drafted up a quick Back Yoke piece, dug my scant scraps out of the bin, and sewed them onto the back before added a waistband with enclosed elastic.
I’m so glad I was able to fix that issue because I love the fit of these! Or actually, I love everything about these!
I have already worn these out to a friend’s place, and I guarantee you I will be wearing them throughout the holiday season! They look glam and luxe, but are just as comfortable as lounging around in leggings, but with the added benefit of being wipe-clean in case of spills, too!
And because I haven’t forgotten, here’s a Sewn Shown Seated photo, with my SeriousFaceTM:
I’ve still got one more piece from my Lestat tribute outfit to show off, plus the night shoot with all three, so stay tuned…