Enter, Spring Race Challenge and Espresso Leggings. Since:
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Lately, however, I've been working on mastering my craft. I want a higher quality finished product, a better fit, etc. Even in my everyday life, I've grown to value one high quality item over masses of low quality "throw aways". In order to achieve such mastery takes time, regular practice, patience, and plenty of material with which to make "mistakes".
I'm very into knits right now, so in order to deepen my knowledge and minimize mistakes, I dug into Sewing Knits That Fit taught by Dyanne Marte who used to work for J. Crew, NY & Co. Highly recommended, by the way. Dyanne said the most pivotal thing while fitting knit pants. It took her 12 pair of pants before she achieved the perfect fit. That's 12 pair of the same pattern! Ok self, permission granted. Make as many as you need. Know that this will be a journey. Know that some things will not work out. Know that you will very likely wear your mistakes so in the famous words of Mr. Tim Gunn, "Make it Work."
Oh I don't like waste, so I made as many adjustments to my pattern block ahead of time by measuring, evaluating stretch and drawing the curves and shapes of my existing, well and ill fitting leggings. Some leggings I can hardly believe fit me. They are tiny when I lay them against my espresso leggings pattern. Like, 5" or more smaller in the thigh.
After adjusting as much as I could, I felt the fear, and proceeded with fabric anyway. The wild "looks like a comic strip threw up on my legs" pattern was previously cut from a Kwik Sew pattern that did not fit. Then was sewn and horridly hacked to attempt to get it to fit properly. I did not put this failure up on the blog as I just didn't know where to go with it. I knew one day I'd fix the fit, but I abandoned them in favor of the espresso leggings to see if I could achieve proper fit that way. Bingo! So, I ripped all the seams out and cut each front and back to fit the espresso leggings. Whew! Fabric saved with minimal scraps and unusable remains.
Because I'm enjoying the depth and documenting the process for my own benefit, I thought you would enjoy seeing side by side photos of version 1 and version 2.
Remember how "see thru" the purple was? Ahem.
Holy Under Roos, Batman!