Sewing the FibreMood 18 Opal Trouser Pattern
When Oyin asked for sewists to come forward to blog for Lush Cloth I jumped at the chance as I had been admiring the beautiful fabrics for quite a while and was amazed when I was chosen.
Due to the lovely selection of fabrics that Lush Cloth stock it was really hard to choose a specific one to use for a blog post, however, I had just received the latest Fibre Mood pattern magazine, edition 18, and inside were the most amazing flared trousers called “Opal” that I instantly fell in love with and the Pigeon Wishes 9 Wale green corduroy was just perfect. Whilst choosing from the website I might have accidentally bought the “Lovely Flowers” black cotton poplin to make a top to wear with the trousers.
When the fabrics arrived, they were beautifully packaged in a white gold spotted tissue paper which you can see had been wrapped with care along with a handwritten note. I was delighted when I opened this package as the colour of the green corduroy was more beautiful than I thought it would be and together with the black cotton poplin is a match made in heaven. The cord is so soft and has a lovely velvety texture and ideally for trousers it has a small amount of stretch.
For those that haven’t used Fibre Mood patterns before you need to trace them from the magazine and add in the suggested seam allowance, they recommend specific fabrics for the patterns and give the amount of fabric needed for each make. Due to the adding of seam allowances and the fact that the pattern is quite fitted I actually made a toile (I very rarely do this as I’m too impatient) using some black and white dogtooth fabric I bought several years ago from a charity shop. The trousers were easy to sew and very few alterations needed to be made. I had traced the size 42 and graded out to a 44 over the hip area and back down to 40/42 over the waist, as I’m tall I also added an inch to each of the legs. Trousers are difficult to fit until they’re nearly made up so when I tried them on I realised that for me the leg length wasn’t quite long enough and I added 2 more inches to the bottom of the traced pattern pieces. The rest of the fit was good and I was really pleased how the trousers hugged the waist and hips particularly as they are fastened with just a side zip.
I laid out my pattern pieces onto the cord and realised with horror that whilst I had ordered the correct amount for the pattern I had ordered prior to adding the additional leg length, for fabrics that don’t rely on directional print I might have just been able to squeeze the leg pieces onto the fabric, but I was using corduroy and when using this fabric you need to lay your pattern pieces in the same direction otherwise the nap will cause the fabric to look darker/lighter and this wasn’t the effect I wanted on my trouser legs so I quickly popped onto the website to purchase some more.
As soon as the additional fabric arrived I quickly added to the washing machine as February was rushing away and I wanted to cut out the remaining leg pieces and finally get started. As I had made a toile very little alterations needed to be made, however, my toile fabric was non-stretch and quite lightweight so whilst the fit of these was good, I was a little surprised that when I tried on the cord trousers the waist was gaping, I assume this is due to the weight and stretch of the fabric, at this point the trousers were practically finished and I was reluctant to unpick the waistband so I decided to reduce the seam allowances around the zip to pull this in which helped a little but it wasn’t quite enough so I unpicked the other side of the waistband and increased the seam allowance, to my delight this was just enough to pull in the remaining gap.
I totally love these trousers the fabric was an excellent match for the pattern, as is the “Lovely Flowers” cotton poplin and I was hoping to show pictures with both items, but this remains a work in progress. I struggled getting pictures of the finished make due to weather, working full time and family commitments so I apologise for the delay in the finished February blog post, whilst the pictures of the trousers can’t show you how comfortable this fabric is I do hope they truly reflect how gorgeous the colour of the corduroy.
The fabrics are still available and you can click below to take a look.
Lovely Black Flowers Cotton Poplin
Thanks
Lucy x