A Proliferation of Pants

There's currently just two weeks left of my life in Spain. I've finished the summer school I was working at, finished my Burdastyle Book garment, and almost finished the red vermouth lurking in the cupboard. Our belongings are all over the place in preparation for boxing up, and the goodbye-drinks have resulted in a 48 hour hangover. What to do? MAKE PANTS (of course).

So, the blouse I created for the Burdastyle book is all bagged up ready for an epic journey to the Barcelona FedEx depot tomorrow (it's on an industrial estate frikkin' MILES away from the centre of Barcelona, in another town entirely). I'm pretty sure I can't show you it at this stage, so it must suffice to say that personally I'm still having trouble looking beyond the fabric colour, but I am very pleased with my handiwork (and 8 out of 10 for construction I think). With three days to spare until my sewing machines must be packed away, I had a tiny window of opportunity to finally make some form of contribution towards my Summer Essentials project and preparation for Self-Stitched-September.

If you were to peruse my Summer Essentials hit-list, there more eagle-eyed among you might notice that pants are no were to be seen. But since Ali, the genius behind the challenge, emphasises flexibility and encourages re-evaluation, I feel no shame in presenting these in the place of one of the other things I didn't get round to making. And seeing as it's three-showers-a-day-hot here at the moment, new pants are going to lighten the pressure to keep up with my laundry!

The pattern I used was a slightly enlarged version of the initial pants pattern I developed at the beginning of the year in preparation for Me-Made-March (like, an eon ago!). I used a variety of pants elastic (my favourite is still FOE) that I purchased from ebay and a market stall. I have written fairly extensively before about my enquiries into using different types of undies elastic here and here.

One of my the best things about making your own pants is that you can make them from an old T-shirt, giving it a new lease of life. The yellow pair begun life as a T-shirt belonging to my boy. When we first met, he was working for Avis, the car rental company, so for his last day in the job I made him this 'Hertz' T-shirt to wear as a joke. Apparently it went down well. But after the event, whose going to wear a wierd handmade corporate car hire company's logo emblazoned on their chest through their own free will?! Pants seemed the natural solution.

My favourites have to be the nautical ones (que sorpresa!) which use yet more of the little anchor ruffle that already adorns a few other creations. The hearts printed ribbon on the red and white pair came from a St. Jordi's day rose (basically Catalunya's valentines day) and the little lucky heart button was a souvenir from my pilgrimage to Britex in San Francisco.

Now, dear readers, I will very soon be without my sewing machines however I will have a week or so with computer access and time on my hands. I was thinking about sharing my pants pattern and making a guide to their construction and upload the whole shebang (somehow, research will be required) onto Burdastyle. I reckon I could attempt some amateur grading to make a couple of sizes, but would there be a market for it? If five people comment on this post to say that they would be interested in having access to my pants pattern and how-to, then I'll do it. But I have a lot of America's Next Top Model I could be watching instead, so if no-one is really interested, then I won't bother. This is democracy at it's very essense people!