Tag Archives: Simplicity 3714

Fleece Pants, Episode 3: Syo

 

Booyeah

Booyeah

Otherwise known as, “just because I have to be different.”

Although Syo has thoroughly enjoyed her Jalie 3022 shorts, she has no interest in flared yoga-pants, fleece or otherwise. She is a child of the skinny jean era. So I wasn’t planning on making her a pair. But, she has been asking for a pair of old-fashioned sweatpants, to wear to her hip hop dance class, where several moves seem to require tugging on sweatpants.

Simplicity 3714

Simplicity 3714

So instead, I pulled out Simplicity 3714, which sweater I had previously made. This time, I was going for the pants. Although I maintain that the half-bunnyhug is one of the cutest things my children have ever refused to wear. Now, it’s not entirely clear from the photo, but this, too, is a flared pattern. Not as obviously as the yoga pants, of course, but really, wtf was I thinking? Don’t answer that. I was thinking “I’m going to gather the ankle anyway, what does it matter?” and “I can just trim a bit off below the knee. It’ll be fine.”

And they are, I guess.

Simplicity

Simplicity

The fabric is a purple fleece I found at Value Village sometime last winter. Actually, it’s one of two pieces I found of the same fleece, on two separate occasions. Syo immediately laid claim to both, and the larger one is still serving as a blanket on her bed.

I cut the size 8 (which the pattern was conveniently already cut out to, saving me the effort of tracing), and added a bit of length (not that Syo is particularly long-legged), and for my peace of mind added a bit of height to the CB and shaved a bit off at the CF. And I made them up. Not a lot of thought, artifice, or anything. As a stunt, I topstitched both the inseam and outseam, which was really more effort than pants like this deserve.

Grommets for waist tie to come through.

Grommets for waist tie to come through.

The most complicated thing I did was interface the waistband with a knit interfacing, mostly as a support for grommets for a waistband drawstring. Speaking of which, I need to get a real drawstring, not just some flattened out bias tape. I wonder if I can find purple twill tape?

Fleece sweatpants

Fleece sweatpants

They seem to fit the bill, anyway although she pretty much never wears them except to dance class, and I suspect will never wear them for anything else once she’s done.

Next, though, she wants fleece leggings.

Ulp.

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Dwarf hoodie

Half a hoodie

Although finished as part of my Christmas procrastination, this little sweater for Syo has the best origins: I cut it out immediately after I finished Tyo’s robe, to use up the irregular quarter-metre of fabric I had left.

Simplicity 3714

The pattern is Simplicity 3714, a Hannah Montana pattern. Unlike the last few kids’ patterns I’ve been annoyed with, this one seems fairly full-featured. The instructions are decent as well. What was fun for me, though, was adding some nifty details.

A couple of months ago, my MIL bought Tyo a bunnyhug*. It’s cream, gorgeous, and has some nifty features including (but not limited to) twill-taped seams, a lined hood, and eyelets for the ties. Unfortunately I don’t have photos of it (it’s really nice), but anyway, it definitely inspired me to try some of the details.

Syo’s Sweater

Unfortunately I didn’t have any cream twill-tape kicking around. So I took the white stuff I had on hand and dropped it in a pot of tea. It came out with this lovely tan colour… a bit different than I was going for but I thought it still looked nice (and it will probably fade a bit after a few washings.)

Hood closeup (with eyelet for drawstring)

Basically I stitched the main seams wrong-side together (so the seam-allowances showed on the outside, trimmed and pressed, and then topstitched the twill tape down overtop, so everything is neat both inside and out. The hood is lined with a plain jersey knit.

Fun view

I remembered (!) to interface the area where the hood eyelets were going to go with a knit fusible interfacing, hoping to avoid the tragedy of the eyelets popping out. This is a fairly sturdy sweatshirt knit, and I made the eyelet-holes as teeny as possible. They feel sturdy and stable at the moment, but we’ll see how they hold up.

Front details

The pattern suggested adding hot-fuse rhinestones to the front. I opted for studs. I may add more if I get ambitious.

Back view

I did the same kind of finish around the zipper, so the edges of the zipper tape and the fabric are completely enclosed behind the twill-tape. I’m not a super fan of this zipper, but the selection for 8″ separating zippers was pretty frigging limited.

Zipper finishing

I forgot to add the elastic at the waistband when I finished it, but fortunately was able to unpick the twill tape, cut a slit in the casing beneath it, insert the elastic, and then stitch the elastic in place and re-stitch the twill-tape, covering my booboo entirely. Yay.

Walk like a Syo

Syo is not super-duper thrilled with it, but I’m actuslly hoping it will be practical, as she is usually overheating and taking off her full-sized sweaters. She wore it pretty happily at the local history museum this afternoon. Maybe it will grow on her. I certainly think it’s pretty cool. But of course it’s not my opinion that matters. 😉

*hoodie.

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