Flora and Fauna Secret Pyjamas

So, having fallen hard for Made by Rae's Luna pants pattern, it'll be little surprise to learn that another pair has been whipped up already. But before I made my second pair, I was a good girl and went back and fixed the issues I had with the stress points on my anchor pair. 

Thanks everyone who left a comment making suggestions on how I could both fix that pair, and avoid the issue with future versions. Want to know which piece of advice I implemented? ALL OF IT!!! First, I cut narrow strips of fusible interfacing and applied them to both sides of the seam where the stress points had appeared. I then restitched the seams slightly inside the original row of stitching, which kind of 'ate up' the bits where the fabric was coming apart (unfortunately I couldn't let out the side seams to compensate for this slight reduction in fabric around the hips because of the in-seam pockets). Finally, I topstitched the rise seam allowance down to one side to reinforce the whole thing, and after a couple of wears, these steps seem to have fixed the issue with no further signs of stress so far.... But to err on the side of caution, I took another piece of advice and chose a size Medium, rather than the Small, for my next pair.

Pattern:

Starting with the size Medium has obviously given a baggier silhouette to this second pair. I think I still prefer the look of the smaller, less-voluminous anchor pair, but I didn't want to wreck this amazing fabric if a repeat of the stress points occurred, so I'm trying to embrace this look. To avoid adding any more fullness around the hips, I didn't bother with the in-seam pockets this time. I know that omitting pockets would be close to blasphemy to some sewers/sewists! I like having pockets in my anchor pair, but the finish on this second pair definitely looks sleeker without. Plus, without them, this was a super-quick project. Aside from not bothering with the pockets, the only other pattern mod I made was to shorten the leg length by about 4cm. 

Fabric:

A couple of months ago Claire, Stevie and I organised a little South Coast sewing meetup. We visited the soon-to-be vacated storage space of Ditto fabrics, and Fabric Godmother's unit/treasure trove. We all came away from the latter with a goodie bag that included 2m of this A-MAZING Cobra corsage cotton lawn. I had been taken with this fabric at a previous Fabric Godmother open day, but had been focussing on purchases for specifics projects at that time. To have acquired some cost-and-therefore-guilt-free, was such a treat! An Instagram thread between the meetup attendees followed about what we planned to make with our pieces, but so far I only know of Claire's epically awesome kimono to have been realised from the fabric we were given.

What I particularly love about this fabric is the fine detail of the printed illustrations. They make me think of Victorian tomes cataloging flora and fauna, the type that might exist at the Natural History museum. I'm actually wearing these trousers now and keep finding myself staring at the veins of a leaf or the scales on the snake. 

As for the fabric itself, it's pretty perfect for this trouser pattern. It's light-weight enough to feel airy when worn on a hot day and to hang well with this type of trouser style, but it's also opaque so no undies are on show. Plus, it's a natural fibre, yet doesn't seem to crease. Hurrah! 

Thoughts:

If my anchor Lunas were a major style departure, then I'm taking the journey further still with these. I'm totally in love with them, but because they're not my usual look, they are pretty much wardrobe orphans. I have only one breastfeeding top that works with them, so I'm currently planning a couple of simple tops that will look good with these and other things in my wardrobe.