THE AVID MAKERS: MARCELA’S CULOTTES

Hi All!

Hope you’ve been having fun and hopefully, some of you have found the confidence to do some pattern hacking!

For this round, I got to try the new culottes pattern and I can confirm, they were a dream to sew and to wear.

I made a beautiful pair in a gingham home furnishing fabric. As always, I made a few small changes to suit my preferences, the first being a simple adjustment to the pockets. I went for a slanted inset pocket instead and this was a nice simple step.

I used the existing pocket pattern piece, placed it on the front leg pattern and cut both pieces as shown in the picture.

My next change was moving the zip from the back to the front, no major changes done. Follow the same steps but do remember to take the seam allowance from the back of the waistband and add it to the front!

Honesty corner, I got carried away inserting my zip and completely forgot to add my waistband first so ended up with a short zip. I chose to make another change as an alternative to unpicking because let’s be honest NO ONE LIKES TO UNPICK! so instead, I added a tab to the end of the waistband and attached a hook and bar and if I do say so myself it ended up a rather nice design feature :)

My final change was to extend the length of my culottes by 2 inches.

I absolutely love this pair and I have already cut out another pair in a beautiful jumbo cord! The fit is very flattering and they are super comfortable. Another successful pair of trousers by the lovely Lisa.

As I loved the shape so much, I thought I’d try them in a sweatshirt fabric and obviously, this pattern didn’t disappoint. Here they are!

The stretch version was super easy to make and came together nice and quick, so if you need a pallet cleanser and some new comfy shorts, I recommend you try these.

I used the pattern pieces as they are with pleats and darts included, I took an inch out of the waist in both front and back side seams and blended the line into the hip. I also removed 1.5 inches out from the top waistline and removed the pockets.

For the waistband, I made a rectangle that was wide enough to accommodate my elastic plus seam allowance and made it as wide as my waist measurement plus 2 inches (these measurements work for me if your waist is a lot smaller than your hips you might want to add some extra inches to your waistband to make sure it stretches enough to fit on to your shorts)

I finally added a patch pocket to the back.