Drafting and sewing a sports outfit

My daughter chose this pink and black flame jersey on her own. The pattern is not something that I had chosen but I was determined to make something useful out of it. S goes to Break dancing and Circus school so she needs good sports outfits. Slowly I developed an idea of sewing a sports outfit: big girl sports leggings and a top made of two contrasting fabrics.

The top was easy to draft. I took a t-shirt of my daughter’s and traced the outline to get the size. I wanted short kimono sleeves so I did not need to replicate the sleeves. Since the flame fabric looked quite restless by itself I split both the front and the back pieces into three to be able to cut the side parts out of black jersey.

A few months ago I had practiced my pattern cutter skills and made a basic pattern for girls leggings. Now I took that pattern and split it in three parts too. I wanted to make the front and the back of the leggings from the black fabric and have I curved strips of pink flames circling both legs. I distorted the inseam to have it curve with my pink strip. The pattern master I got last year was a great help in making the curved seams:

My final leggings pattern looked like this. Notice that my pattern doesn’t have the seam allowance included. That would make this kind of flat drafting much more difficult:

I did make some changes after I had sewed the leggings together. Originally they were too wide and I took about 1 cm of from the curved seams. I also curved the center back seam much more, lowered the front waistline and shortened the legs. I must thank S for patiently trying the leggings over and over again when I made the changes.

This picture shows nicely how I managed to make the twisting stripe to the leggings:

I am super happy how these turned out to be. There was always a chance for a disaster since I drafted the patterns and did not bother to make any toiles.

S seemed also happy. I got the outfit ready just when she was leaving for her circus lesson so she changed into the brand new clothes. After coming home she continued to practice and I took my chance to take some photos and video:

We made a little video of S’s home circus tricks. Enjoy!

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Katja