Treggings and Stripes

Just because I don't buy new clothes doesn't mean I don't crave a new outfit when hitting the town as much as the next chica. Especially after a WHOLE four weeks of post-30th-birthday / pre-Christmas abstinence that is being drawn to a close with TWO birthday celebrations to attend in Saturday night. That, people, is the very definition of a situation which requires a new outfit! (Pictured above, the first sip after those four, long, weeks.)

As you might have seen from my more frequent posting, I've been getting my sew on as of late! November's sobriety has had the unexpected result of a surge in productivity. However, some of this increase in finished garments has got to be because I've been deploying some patterns which are either good to go, or require only a little tweaking. The aforementioned new outfit is a prime example:

The top is a variation of the two previous navy tops. It's the shape of the navy T-shirt but with the hem extended, and set in sleeves. Oh but wait, don't let me down-play my major achievement here: the self bound neck hole! Woo hoo! I really wasn't expecting this to work out, after my previous disaster, but I was inspired my EmilyKate's amazing stripy T that sports a great self-bound neckline. I just took it very gently so as not to stretch the cut neck edge. When the binding was attached, it looked pretty rubbish, but a gentle steam with the iron got it dealt with and made it lay flat. I was prepared for disappointment and the likelihood of re-cutting the neckline and using my usual zigzag elastic effect, but no, to my immense surprise it wasn't necessary!

Onto the bottoms. During the creation of my jeggings, I somehow located enough patience to mark all the alterations I had to make onto the pattern itself. So it was a simple enough task to take my jeggings pattern and some black sateen fabric that has a slight stretch and crank out some treggings.

EXCEPT the black sateen doesn't have as much stretch in it as the jeggings navy stretch twill which completely explains why, after I graded my existing pattern up a size for the jeggings, I ended up taking most of the extra width out again from the side seam. Agh! Anyway, aside from them being pretty tight, they look DAMN good!

As with the jeggings, I have evaded the pain of making a fly front by making a concealed side zip fastening. There are patch pockets on the butt and small patch pockets in the same shape on the front. Oh, and they are great for dancing in deserted metro stations in the early hours of the morning (please bring in exhibit A):