Pants on a cold day

First the photographer, in putting some hot water in a bucket to thaw out the heat pump. The funny look on his face is he thought doing an outside photoshoot was sort of a dumb idea today.

Mitts I knit and felted out of Lopi. They are a bit like wearing a roll of paper towel on your hands, but warm.

I caught myself feeling particularly happy today and then I realized why. 

Snow has slowed this city down to a near standstill and I have been able to do nothing but cocoon in here with my husband and my dog and sew.

Perfect.

Since I was in a fooling around mood and, waiting still for those summer patterns and raincoat pattern to arrive from BMV, I decided to try the Claudia pattern from StyleArc. 

I have been feeling I wanted narrow ankle pants lately. 

Those full hem, thin thigh, dropped waist pants that have been in for so long are annoying me. Of course they look elegant worn the way they are supposed to be with 4" heels and long hems that touch the ground but if you have the kind of life where you are running up hills late for class, or loading dogs and grandchildren into cars, you wear flats and instead elegant you get flappy hems and stubby looking legs.

So the Claudia pant appealed to me. 

It is meant to be made out of stretch woven, and I had that, and have a seam down the centre of the leg which creates a feel of a crease. 

One thing I can tell you if you are thinking of getting into the new slimmer pants, is they absolutely have to have a crease to look right - a relief in a way for us old school mother types who learned the hard way "Moooom, you ruined my pants you ironed lines down them", that creases were now longer in - because now they are back.

The waist is also waist high and there is a dart in the middle of the back hem, I am not sure why but I am sure it is very useful.

This particular pattern was not on my pile-o-pants and now I wish it had been, because these are comfortable and would make good every day pants. Now I just need some nice stretch woven cotton which is going to require some fabric buying somewhere other than the bottom of the street.

Here are the shots. 

Taken on location, styled with some wet mitts and some cord from some snow blowing unit on the sidewalk and with fox terrier accents, and shorty snowboots:

My bum, Rascal's bum. The fabric is stretch so they are more comfortable than it might look in that area and I have learned to live with the under the rear wrinkles that you get when you need a lot of fabric to cover that part and then the fabric has to hit skinnier legs. Some things in life are to be lived with.

Since I was already amusing the neighbourhood with having my picture taken outside on a cold day I decided to show you some of my Vogue 1264 pants, four variations of which I made for my SWAP.

Here they are as per pattern in wool gabardine. 

The thigh is quite full in this pant, which is good in gab if you want them to be comfortable to sit down in which these are. I lengthened them because the original pattern is above the ankle by a lot but I over did it. This afternoon I am going to go back and chop 1 1/2" inches off the hem and re-hem them - another thing I learned about these slim pants, in addition to the need for creases, is they really need to be shorter so they look current and not '80s.

See what I mean? This will be fine much shorter with the right shoe. There can not be any kind of fold in the crease in pants like this.

Finally here is the same Vogue pattern in a stretch woven, leg narrowed a bit as a result and a short length.

So that does it for me for pants for a while, about seven pairs all up and only one to re-hem. 

Back to work tomorrow and to incubating the next projects.