Striped trousers

Mmmm, these feel lovely on. The fabric is a really heavy wool and poly mixture from my local quality fabric store and they have that delicious heavy drape and fall that you get from really expensive purchased trousers. In the shop I was told (after the fabric had been cut) that I should not wash the fabric and certainly should not do so in the machine. However, the test scrap that I washed (safety pinned to a pair of jeans on a 40 degree, one hour wash cycle) shrank a weeny little bit, but not enough to matter, and after I washed the entire length, I felt the washing had improved the weight and drape of the fabric, making it slightly thicker than it had been. However, if you expand the pictures you will clearly see, particularly on the photo of the front slant pockets, a very annoying problem. The fabric picks up lint and hairs like they are magnetised. I am clearly going to have to spend time with the lint brush when wearing these.

They are lined with a very cheap poly lining rather than the Bemberg I would normally put into trousers. I've found the Bemberg wasn't working for my washable trousers. It seemed to be shrinking up a bit more than I'd like over time. (I don't think its designed for repeated washing). I did find the cheap lining horrible to work with and wasn't expecting much from it after my struggles to overlock it together. However, it seems to be behaving OK now its actually in the trousers so time will tell if this works better than the Bemberg for what I expect will be very frequently worn (and washed) trousers.

The pockets are stayed with Vilene Stitch Reinforced tape and lined with a heavy cotton quilting fabric which has a magnetic attraction to the trouser fabric and exhibitionist tendencies, preferring to be outside the pocket at all times rather than in it like its supposed to be. However, a bit of topstitching on the slant pocket (in addition to the routine understitching) has tamed that tendency reasonably well.

The waistband is supported with fusible cotton underlining rather than waistband interfacing as I find the former to be soft but strong enough to hold the waistband shape on mid to light fabrics. I had to do a bit of tweaking of the waistband to make it fit. I put on a straight waistband as usual, but for some reason this didn't work as well as it usually does for me, and it needed to be shaped a bit. So I sewed a dart, three eighths of an inch deep at its widest point (top of waistband) tapering to nothing at the attachment seam, on each side where the waistband met the side seam. This worked fabulously well to make a fake shaped waistband and allowed the shaping to be tailored. If necessary, I could have also had a dart at the centre back but managed to avoid that this time.

Fly closure at the front because I prefer them on trousers. This time I didn't try and faff around with highly complex instructions for lining flies. For routine zipper closures, I like to tack my centre front lining seam where the zipper will fit, then press the lining, before undoing the tacking. This gives me a neatly pressed seam allowance already turned back for me and ready to sew down to the zipper tape. I did the same with these trousers and it worked fine.

I've included a photo of the trousers worn with the navy jacket. The black round neck tee I have on in these pictures, and the pics taken of the wine jacket in the previous post, won't be worn with the jackets. I took all the photos this morning, about two hours before it started to snow. It was extremely cold... much too cold to be taking tops on and off.

While I had the camera out, I also took a photo of the cream dress with the animal blouse underneath it.

Coming up; a skirt, a pair of trousers, and an accessory.