Silver Shine Leggings

For the last few months, Fabric Mart has had a selection of medium weight synthetic knits with metallic foiled designs.  The listings say they're "from the same manufacturer that creates leotards for Team USA Gymnastics."  If so, I'd still guess these particular fabrics have been dead stock for a very long time, because they have a distinct air of Early 2000s Cheese to them that I of course found irresistible.

I ordered three different prints when they were $2 per yard, then went back for a fourth when they were briefly reduced to $1 per yard.

One of them I wanted to make into leggings, but I knew not only that they wouldn't be stretchy enough to use my regular tights pattern (which is another possible hint at the fabrics' age, from back before spandex started infusing everything), but, even if it would work, the print was too strongly geometric to use with that no-side-seam pattern.  I decided to try the tights part of Simplicity 8042, which I had only made once before, and six years ago, and very disapointingly.

I was determined to make them work, and, after a lot of pinching and sewing and pinning and sewing and sewing again to make things less angular, I got where I wanted.

 They are aggressively shiny.

Big Floral Shirt

I thrifted Simplicity 8042, from 1992, several years ago, because it's just so ridiculous.

I very probably would have worn it in 1992--well, view 1 or 3.  View 2's collar is a bit too...Knock Off Laura Ashley Romantic to align with my tastes.

I got the pattern as a curiosity, never thinking I'd actually make it, in part because it requires a lot of fabric--over three yards of 60" for view 1.  And it needed to be soft, flowing fabric, too.

It turns out, though, that I just needed to take a new look at a piece of fabric that I thrifted in 2017.  It's a large floral print, a lightweight plain weave rayon, in purples and pinks and greens on an ivory ground, over 4 yards of 60" wide, that I had, for years, been looking at and thinking "This would make a lovely flowing dress but I would never wear such a thing, because the pale ground means that every bit of my underwear would show right through."  I never thought of getting rid of it, though, because the print was just so, to be cliché, me.

And then things clicked and I made it into view 1 of this shirt.

And it is, indeed, ridiculous.

Experimentaleggings

Several years ago, I took a disco-era pattern for leggings and fused the front and back pieces into a single unit (and omitted the zipper because zipper?? in leggings???) and made a pair of leggings that fit OK, and a few years after that I made another pair from better cloth and I've worn them a whole lot this winter.  Maybe time to make another pair?

But the weight gain had me second-guessing things--sure, they fit fine, but that's probably because of the wonderful four way stretch of the (mystery, probably from the glory days of the $1/yard Walmart cloth bins) fabric.  So I decided I'd try a different pattern, since I've long since parted with that disco-era pattern, and turned to this relatively recently thrifted combo

Simplicity 8042 from 1992, with leggings meant for two-way stretch, since it's from a more primitive time. (That doesn't mean I wouldn't happily have worn view 1 exactly as-is back then, it just means the leggings wouldn't have had as nice a recovery as what we can get in stores today.)  And I  happened to have several yards of a thrifted red velour I could use to make a pair to get an idea of fit.

I hesitate to call it a wearable muslin, because...red velour.  I'm not sure if I'll be able to see anything made from it as anything but some sort of Santa costume. 

ho ho ho.