Crafting: Making Culottes

Ahh, culottes.  Those things that have all the safety and comfort of trousers, but allow you to swish around as if you were wearing a skirt.  I've never made any before, in fact I've never sewn any full size clothes before, just miniature ones for my teddies on a tiny pink sewing machine I had as a child.  I have altered clothes in the past, but only by hand.  I didn't actually have a pattern for this, but decided to just wing it whilst using this helpful video to get the basic shape. 

This project gave me the opportunity to finally pull out the sewing machine my parents had brought me well over ten years ago, and which has just been sitting in a cupboard since then.  It probably does need a good clean and oil, but it managed get through this project with not too many problems and I only had to have a couple of fights with it.

I sketched out a basic idea of how I wanted to cut the fabric to make these culottes.  The plan was to have one piece of fabric for each leg with shaping on either side to make the crotch area.  Then one strip of material for the waist band, and a couple of pieces to help strengthen the closure area which would just have buttons at the moment and maybe a zip later down the line.

A quick word on the material.  This is African wax cotton, which is pretty easy to work with, and I did give it a wash before starting any work to reduce the chance of shrinkage after all the sewing is done.  It was actually a gift from some friends when I lived in Nigeria and there's actually enough material to make a full African outfit, including the head dress.  So, theoretically, I could make a number of items with this pattern and it also meant that I wasn't as bothered about the possibility of messing this up as I might have been with less material.  This took a lot of pressure off making this outfit, so it was much more enjoyable than it otherwise would have been.  I really love the design, it's quite bold but with colours I do normally wear.  When I was in Nigeria there was a fashion of leaving the white strip with all the fabrics information at the top and bottom of the fabric exposed, and I wanted to do the same with this garment as a node to where it came from.

Once I'd cut my pieces out I sewed the leg seams together, and then the front and back seams of the culottes.   I don't have the machinery that would finish the edge for me, so to stop it fraying I decided to use the zigzag stitch on my machine and then cut right up to this stitch (I still need to do the cutting part).

Then I added the panels to strengthening closure where the buttons and button holes where going to be.

Finally, as I wanted to have as much volume as possible, I decide the pleat the waist line instead of actually cutting the fabric to my shape.  Once these were in, with more in the back than the front, I sewed on the waist band to hold them into place.  As I had planned to also have the white information strip at the bottom of the waist band as well as the bottom of the garment, I sewed the back of the waist band first and the fish would have to be upside down.  However, in the end I decided it looked a bit too out of place, so I folded it in and sewed along the edge.  At some point in the future I will probably unpick this band and replace it so that the fish are actually facing the right way, but for now it's staying the way it is and, actually, it doesn't look too bad.

As I was still leaving the information strip at the bottom of the culottes I didn't need to hem this part, which was a complete bonus!  So all that was left to do was cut and sew the button holes, and then sew on the buttons.  I decided to just use these plastic buttons that I had collected from a magazine a few years ago as the colour sort of matched the colours on the fabric, and the size and patterns suited the brightness of the other colours.  It definitely isn't the neatest sewing around the button hole, but I'm just amazed I remembered how to do it.

I'm not going to lie, these culottes are not the most flattering items of clothing ever made, and if I'd cut the material to skim my hips rather than putting in the pleats it would have suited my figure better.  It probably isn't helped that the fabric is relatively stiff so that it has a more structured feel at the moment.  Once it's had a bit more wear and washing though, the fabric will move a lot more freely and will take on my shape a little better.  Despite all this I really love these and I've already worn them quite a few times.  Getting some practise with the machine has also been good and I'll definitely be making more items in the future.  In fact, I already have some outfits planned.