The Liberace Leggings

Viewers of a gentle, tasteful disposition, you best look away now…

My previous pair of purple leggings are my FAVOURITE running running bottoms – so wonderfully comfortable, and the natural waist means they don’t shift around a bit as I run. They’re so comfortable I actually raced in them the other week (and any runner will tell you that if you have any doubts whatsoever about your kit, you don’t wear it on race day!).

So after a full day of finishing up the Run dem Crew refashion challenge, plus finishing up a skirt, I found myself with a few hours and an inexplicable desire to sew up another Papercut “Ooh La Leggings” pattern (UK stockist here) in the audacious lycra/foil in my stash:

I bought this crazy-ass fabric at Suzi Spandex when I was in Montreal, 80/20 nylon/lycra mix, which they call “Spirographix” (mine’s the charcoal colourway, though it’s much more teal in real life). The hand of these feels quite “leotard” or “costumey” really, but it’s fine for short bursts of exercise IMHO. Certainly nowhere as nice as the Suziplex I bought, through strangely 50% more expensive. Go figure.

Viewers of a gentle, tasteful disposition, you best look away now…

My previous pair of purple leggings are my FAVOURITE running running bottoms – so wonderfully comfortable, and the natural waist means they don’t shift around a bit as I run. They’re so comfortable I actually raced in them the other week (and any runner will tell you that if you have any doubts whatsoever about your kit, you don’t wear it on race day!).

So after a full day of finishing up the Run dem Crew refashion challenge, plus finishing up a skirt, I found myself with a few hours and an inexplicable desire to sew up another Papercut “Ooh La Leggings” pattern (UK stockist here) in the audacious lycra/foil in my stash:

I bought this crazy-ass fabric at Suzi Spandex when I was in Montreal, 80/20 nylon/lycra mix, which they call “Spirographix” (mine’s the charcoal colourway, though it’s much more teal in real life). The hand of these feels quite “leotard” or “costumey” really, but it’s fine for short bursts of exercise IMHO. Certainly nowhere as nice as the Suziplex I bought, through strangely 50% more expensive. Go figure.

So I laid out all my pieces on my generous 1 metre cut, feeling quite smug that I’ve got some leftover if I want to use them as a side accent on some Jalie running skirts

…but then I turned over the side piece and saw this gaping hole and print wound!

It was starting to come back to me, through my jet-legged and fabric overstimulated haze… I now remember she gave me extra length when she was cutting because of this imperfection, d’oh!

There wasn’t enough length to recut the entire piece so I just put a scrap piece on that corner, introduced a seam, and trimmed the top edge. There are advantages to such a LOUD fabric – you can’t see the extra seam at all…

So in any case, I started cutting these out around 3:30pm on the bank holiday Tuesday (yesterday), and I had them finished in time to wear out to my running group at 6pm! As per usual, I used my better elastic waistband tutorial, too.

Apologies for the indoor shots – it was literally raining sideways when we took these and I didn’t want to take sweaty photos in the dark when I got home!

I took 6cm out of the lower leg of the pattern pieces this time around, and I think the length is just perfect now – only a little bit of scrunching going on in the lower leg!

Big thanks to my friend Chris for posting this photo during our warmup “running in place” at RDC last night, even though I look like I’m squatting or something, it’s a good action shot!

I’ll be honest – when I was leaving home, James gave me a “are you really sure?” look, and I was thinking they were more hilarious circus that haute couture, but the reactions of the other RDC runners was out of this world!! Honestly, I lost count of the number of “ohmygod where did you get those, I need those!” and “holy crap those are awesome” and ultimately “I will pay you so much to make me some” but it was at LEAST twenty.

I’ve come to the realisation that you simply cannot be too garish in the world of running clothes. I honestly had people ready to tear these off my body to make them their own. And to think I wasn’t sure about leaving home in them!

But this leads me to another question, anyone know where I can get this lycra from a UK/EU source by any chance? I love Suzi, but shipping from Montreal would just kill me!

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