Alpi trousers and a refashioned blouse à la Indiana Jones < with my hands

I managed to grab literally the last Alpi trousers pattern from Named clothing. I was lucky since I had planned on making these trousers for a while. However, don’t bother trying to buy this pattern, at least from Named. Some of their retailers might still have some of these pattern left even though this pattern is fairly old. Anyway, I like the basic look of these trousers. They are quite masculine, pretty loose and have a bit lower waistline than in most of the trousers I have lately made.

I got some nice army green cotton sateen in a nice bargain from Materials, Helsinki. The fabric has a tiny bit of stretch and the colour is nice for the autumn.

I made again my usual adjustments to the pattern. I laid my trusted trouser sloper on top of the pattern and traced a new crotch curve and made sure that there was enough room for my front thighs and hips. This is basically everything I need to do in order to get a pretty nice fit. So, I warmly recommend spending a lot of time to get your trouser sloper to fit. After doing it once you can use it for a long time!

I liked the detailed instructions the pattern had. I am still not very comfortable with trouser flys. This time I managed pretty well, although I still forgot to add seam allowance to the left-hand side of the trouser opening. (I will learn someday!) Luckily that didn’t hurt too much since the zipper sat a bit deeper in the fly as I have normally seen. I just sewed the zipper on with minimal seam allowance on the left-hand side. But look at the colour match of the zipper! For once the colour of the zipper matched perfectly!

The only time when I did something different from the pattern was when I slip-stitched the waistband facing on by hand. I never really liked stitch-in-the-ditch option. I am never completely able to stay in the ditch and more often than not end up with puckers or some other ugly bits on the wrong side.

The finished pair of Alpi trousers

My husband M said that the trousers had sort of an army vibe to them. I, however, saw myself adventuring in the jungle alongside Indiana Jones. So I threw on one other fairly new make, a silk-blouse refashion to make my version of the adventuring archaeologist outfit. I couldn’t really get to a real jungle but luckily there were plenty of moss-covered ruins available! Sorry about the wrinkliness of the trousers. I had already worn them a while and thus the picture is pretty realistic in showing what they look in real life, wrinkles and all!

I think that the fit is pretty good. The trousers feel really comfortable. Of course, the trousers bunch up when I move but that I think is only natural. These were not meant to be skinny-fit jeans.

There are two back pockets which look nice. The front pockets perhaps could be a bit deeper but I can still hold my phone in them, at least, if I don’t sit down.

Why it pays to refashion a blouse

I mentioned my blouse. I found this Repeat silk blouse from the local recycling centre. It costed something like 4 € and it looked completely unworn. As the Repeat blouses normally cost over 200 €, I grabbed it immediately even though it was size 42 (I’m 36). At home, I first thought about ripping the shirt apart and using the material for something else but then finally I realised that the dropped shoulder look created by the large-sized blouse was actually quite nice. The sleeves still fit and everything. The biggest problem with the blouse was a ridiculous big and pointed collar. It resembled something from the 70s.

I very carefully ripped the whole collar off. That took some time since the stitches were super small and the fabric was delicate. I finally managed to do it without destroying anything. Then I still needed to unpick the ends of the collar. The back of the collar was alright but the front widened out and had those sharp corners. I drew a new smaller collar with an erasable marker and cut all the excess fabric off. Compared to the unpicking it was fairly quick to reassemble the collar and fasten it back to the blouse. So, I now have a nice expensive blouse that cost me only 4 € and a couple of hours of work! And it suits my pair of Alpi trousers.