Thanks so much for all your support (and patience!) with the relaunch of our PB Jam Leggings pattern! I’ve had a lot of requests for the updated files for those of you who bought via my Etsy Shop but I should be up to date now. There’s no time limit for requesting the new versions, though, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, please fill out the form in this post.
Two pairs of updated PB Jams!
PB Jam Leggings – update out now!
Back in 2013, when I started FehrTrade Patterns, there were a lot of things I didn’t know! Seven years on, I’ve learned so much from my mistakes, experiences, and from the generosity of others. The PB Jam Leggings (along with the XYT Workout Top) were the first pattern we ever released, and they were in need of a bit of modernising to bring up to the standards of the rest of our patterns.
I’m proud to say that the updated version of the PB Jam Leggings is finally out now! The list of changes here is quite extensive but here goes…
Fehr Trade Patterns 2nd Birthday Sale!
Can you believe it’s been two years since I launched the first FehrTrade activewear patterns back in December 2013?? In those two years I’ve managed to release 10 different activewear patterns (with more on the way!), and I thought it was high time we all celebrate!
I’ve got a bunch of great stuff planned for the entire month of December, but I wanted to kick things off by announcing a special 2nd birthday sale to send a big THANK YOU to all my loyal readers! So for the entire month of December you can save 20% off all purchases at shop.fehrtrade.com by using the code “2NDBIRTHDAY” (Paypal users note that you’ll go quite far through the process before the coupon box is shown).
I also wanted to take this opportunity to flag up that I quietly released an update to the PB Jam Leggings pattern recently! I’m going back through my earliest patterns and upgrading the illustrations to be more in line with the most recent ones. My illustration skills have come so far in the past two years and I wanted to give people who purchase my earlier patterns the same experience as those who grab my latest ones.
Yoga-style PB Jam Leggings – a tutorial by Lolita Patterns
Sewing Indie Month is back again so you can look forward to a whole month of fun interviews, tutorials, pattern sales, and sewing contests (with a ton of prizes!) throughout the month of September. Just like last year, when I interviewed Hannah from Sinbad & Sailor and you got a great tutorial from Heath Lou hacking my XYT Workout Top into a maxi dress, you’ll get to read some great, different content from my usual sort, starting off with this fabulous tutorial by Amity of Lolita Patterns. You may recall that I pattern tested her Sugar Plum dress a few years ago (and I still wear it!), plus we got to meet up when she visited London a while back, too. So read on and see how she adapted my PB Jam Leggings pattern to have wider legs and a yoga-style waistband, too! – melissa
I was so lucky to get paired with Melissa for the tutorial post for SIM. While my life before baby was filled with court visits (I was an attorney) and professional wear, my new mom life incorporates a LOT of yoga pants. Casual wear is my life now! So it was unbelievably perfect to get paired with Fehr Trade patterns.
For my tutorial I turned her very stylish PB Jam Leggings into yoga pants! This required a different and thicker waistband, and a widening of the legs. Can I just tell you that my pants turned out amazing?!? I was going to just go black pants with the gray houndstooth contrast but at the last second remembered I had some orange stretch piping I had bought for a project but had since bought a different shade of orange. This piping made the pants. Literally. The piping looks so amazing I have worn these pants 4 times already and I’ve only had them made for a week!
I’m here to share pictures and a tutorial on how I transformed the PB Jam leggings into yoga pants. To do this, I used a pair of yoga pants I loved to see how wide I wanted each part of the leg.
Wide leg alteration
Excuse the dog hair—such is the life with three dogs 🙂
The bottom of the leg was 10 inches.
In between the knee and the hem was 8 7/8, and the knee was 8 5/8. I took these measurements and wrote them on the diagram so I could compare and make sure I didn’t forget them. I also measured the inseam and how far down the knee began from the waist. These are all helpful measurements when altering the pattern to match the yoga pants we are copying from.
Now keep in mind, these are all just one side of the leg (so the entire circumference would be twice the measurement) and also do not include seam allowances. But this measurement is perfect because the pattern pieces work this way.
A Mountain of Your Makes (Part One)
I am long, long overdue at showing off all your incredible, inspiring, and beautiful versions of my patterns, and I’ve accumulated so many over the past 6 months or so (shocking, I know!) that it’s enough to fill not one, not two, but three posts! These are only in rough date order from when I collected them, so if you don’t see your more recent make included, hold on, as it may be in Parts Two or Three (all of the Surf to Summit Tops are yet to come!).
Devon and her “Rainbow Sparkle Pants of Awesome” PB Jams
Winnie’s third(!) art-print VNA
Ms McCall’s spotty Duathlons
Read more… (scroll down)
Kat’s new XYT Workout Top
Ms McCall’s Threshold Shorts
Maria’s Funki Fabrics “dyesplosion” XYT Top & Duathlon Shorts
Exercise eye candy
It’s been a while since I showed you some of the amazing finished versions of my first two patterns I’ve spotted from around the internet (over a month, in fact!), so I thought I’d show off some of the amazing diversity of workout gear others have achieved.
My own printed PB Jams and mocha T-Back Workout Top
I’ll start off with two versions of my own that you’ve seen peeks of in the pattern photos, but not properly had a look at. This is probably my favourite pair of PB Jam Leggings I’ve made so far – I used some printed lycra from Minerva (sold out now!) teamed up with some neon red wicking lycra from my stash and I swear I get compliments every single time I wear them!
The top is a very early version of the T-Back XYT Workout Top, and one I wasn’t entirely happy with – you can see a lot of pulling around the neckline that I eliminated in later revisions of the pattern, but I wanted to show this one anyway so you could see the contrast coverstitch binding edges and my use of braided trim at the vertical T piece. I’d used the same neon red wicking lycra for the accents so these two coordinate rather nicely when work together – you could easily do the same by using your leggings swirl fabric in your upper back piece on the workout top.
Here you can see the classic (non-invisible) pocket in the centre back, and that it really does keep your phone and gels close enough to not bounce or bulge!
And lastly, I just really like this shot my dad took of me in these leggings while I was running around a frosty park in Virginia last November.
Beaute’ J’Adore’s Reebok-inspired PB Jams
I love this idea – Nikki had the opportunity to design her own pair of Reebok trainers, so of course she took it one step further and made her own leggings to match!
How amazing is it that this is the first activewear she’s sewn, too?! (Seriously, go back and look at her DIY makes – I’d steal her entire wardrobe if I could!)
A Rainbow in Bath
You may have already read Winnie’s post about our weekend (‘cos she’s well faster than me at writing!), but it’s just too big not to post, however late, because…
….I finally got to meet Winnie (aka Scruffy Badger)! Look, we’re on the same couch and everything!
When I was looking at half marathons to run before London Marathon, Winnie stepped up to campaign for Bath, and won me over with her offer of a comfortable bed, carb-loaded dinner, and pre-race breakfast. And all I had to do was show her a few coverstitch tricks. Bargain!
To top it off, she gifted me some of her adorable shoe bows, too, with signature Winnie elephants!
Winnie runs the Bath Half every year, so this was her 5th(!) time running it, but a first for me so I was grateful for a local to get me to the start line on time. And I finally got to race in the PB Jam Leggings I made from the rainbow space-dyed supplex, too.
Updated progress – 5 different projects!
Real life is starting to run away from the documented garments on this site, so it’s definitely time for a little roundup of projects which I’ve been working on, yet haven’t quite done a full photoshoot for yet…
The Sherlock coat
The Sherlock coat is 90% done – I’ve attached the lining and flipped it all right side out, but there’s still some hand-stitching to be done. However, this is currently “parked” while James is waiting for the Etsy lady to put up more replica buttons for sale (yes, someone makes buttons that look just like the ones on Cumberbatch’s coat!). When those arrive, I’ll finish the handstitching, sew them on, and make a gajillion keyhole buttonholes with my vintage Singer attachment.
The Rainbow PB Jam Leggings
I used some of my most precious, imported Space Dyed “confetti” supplex to make a pair of my PB Jam Leggings to wear to the Bath Half marathon next weekend, and possibly run London marathon in, too, depending on the weather. These are totally finished and road-tested at Run dem Crew last week (to rapturous compliments!) but I’m waiting until next weekend to do a photoshoot in the race environment.
You saw these in my invisible pocket tutorial, remember?
(Actually, now that I think of it, I still need to show you all my last set of PB Jams and XYT Tops from my big pre-release photoshoot, too!)
The Brasilia Dress
I’ve been wanting to make Rachel’s free Brasilia Dress pattern since she released it on Christmas Day, and I finally got the kick I needed, in the form of a big opportunity – I’ve been asked to speak at the House of Commons on Monday about a new stem cell bill! Omg!! So of course I needed a new dress, and I figured the red cotton sateen in my stash would be perfect, both for confidence and the connotation with blood. Even though it was a rush job, I still made enough time to sew up a muslin first, and the finished dress is now finished, too. I’ll try to do a photoshoot this weekend and the grab a few photos in the Houses of Parliament itself next week!
PB Jam Leggings – invisible pocket tutorial
One of the favourite features of my PB Jam Leggings pattern is that there’s a secure, inner pocket at the upper back to keep things like your phone, keys, or gels handy while you’re working out. While I was developing the pattern, I decided to make this pocket one layer, and use the exterior of the leggings as the other side of the pocket, sealing off the bottom with topstitching.
But sometimes you may not want any topstitching visible from the right side, so to do this, you only need one extra piece of fabric and a few short steps. Making the pocket invisible from the outside will only add about 5 minutes max onto your construction time, but if your fabric is thick, definitely consider cutting your pocket from a thinner lycra!
Here’s the finished invisible pocket on my latest “rainbow sherbert” pair I’ve just finished!
Before you start…
When you’re cutting out your fabric, cut two pocket pieces instead of just one.
Step One
Fold down the shorter, curved edge of one of the pocket pieces and topstitch with a twin needle or coverstitch (or, alternatively, finish with narrow elastic or FOE)
Step Two
With right sides together, stitch the longer, curved edge of the two pocket pieces, and flip right side out (note: if you’re zigzagging this seam, you’ll want to trim the seam allowance and/or clip the curves to get a smooth seam)
Dawn's Psychedelic Rainbow PB Jam Leggings
When was the last time you actually LOLed at a sewing blog? Because I just did, twice, reading Dawn’s (aka “cabinbaby”) post about her PB Jam Leggings. Seriously! She totally nails the self-defeating runner inner dialogue there, too…
You all know I’m partial to super loud patterns and bright colours when I make my own leggings, but look – I have a fellow kindred spirit! Rainbow colours and psychedlic swirls weren’t enough for Dawn, no, no – she even used rainbow variegated thread, people! I totally applaud the use of the gymnastic poses in showing off all the finer points of the leggings, too.
One thing Dawn talks about in her post is using your serger/overlocker to make a mock-flatlock stitch, like you see on a lot of RTW sportswear. I haven’t found the regular overlocked seams to be a chafing problem for me, but I know a lot of people are more sensitive to it, and you can do your own flatlock stitching at home with just a few tension adjustments…
Read more about her versions over on her site, Two On, Two Off?