Sunday, October 30, 2016

Man Tracksuit Pants


Good news and bad news.
Bad news is "The man in front of Sainsbury's" is a sham. I was so proud of having met him, he seemed so eager to tell me the truth and nothing but the truth about fabric composition. Well, caught lying the lad. I bought and carried through the air three metres  of this s***t for nothing. He told me it was cotton, double sided, gorgeous. Well, it is not, at least not only cotton. Its blackness glows, it sticks to my iron if too hot and it burns like (to say the least) viscose, or worse, the feared and despised polyester. What a pity! Three metres, 140 cm wide.
Good news is I made a new custom fit pattern: tracksuit of my love.
I used Aldrich's book for menswear, drawing the flat paettern in paper with K's real measures. This is almost necessary in this particular case because he is so tall and thin, the standard sizing is always wide or short. Now this is proportionate, well fitting and becoming. A pattern to keep and use over and over. The man loves his traksuits. And burning them lighting the fireplace... hahaha! So, these will not be the last. I hope.

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Black Jersey Minishort Copycat

A very simple but necessary kind of project, when I saw these Adidas minishorts on my friend Meri, I had to have them. 
So I borrowed them, and used the rub off technique described in this book, which is proving VERY useful, to copy them. They fitted me like a globe, so I only had to reproduce them exactly. In the final stages of construction I decided to put a couple of elasticated bands at the top insteat of a cord, between the topstitching lines.
For future reproductions, better not to topstitch the top part, only understitch it like in the model, to avoid some ruffling. Nothing serious, since it disappears when wearing them, but it makes the piece to protude slightly off the body.
Other than that, and the fact that this is not 100% cotton (thanks to the man in front of Saintbury's, who lied to me) perfect!