My self-drafted cotton-linen pleated trousers

After I made my legform, I made a well-fitting sloper that I plan to talk about later. However, I had this lovely locally woven Kultavilla cotton-linen fabric that I wanted to make a pair of modern loose-fitting trousers from. So, instead of making a pair of fitted trousers with the sloper I had spend so much time fitting to my exact form, I decided to go for a pleated trousers with an easy elasticated waist.

The fabric

I bought the fabric long ago at the Ommel festival but I am pretty sure it is this one. It is very soft cotton-linen blend. It is pretty loosely woven, so I made sure to overlock the edges before washing the fabric. The wash made the fabric more dense and better suited for trousers than what it originally appeared. However I still had to finish all the seams carefully. In the finished pair the fabric feels very soft and it doesn’t have any stiffness of the linen – probably due to the cotton content. It does show wrinkles but it doesn’t wrinkle as badly as pure linen fabric would.

Designing the trousers

I widened the waistline and added room for the pleats plus the amount that I needed to fit the waist over my hips. I added extra width throughout the length but still made the trousers to narrow down a bit. For the waist, I cut a long and wide rectangle that I folded in half. I made a casing for the elastic but left some room above the casing to form a cute ruffled paper-bag waist.

Sewing the trousers down was pretty straightforward. However, after I tried the pair on, I realised immediately a big minus in my design. It didn’t have any pockets! This just didn’t do, so I made afterthought pockets.

I made a pocket opening to the both side seams and attached a self-drafted side-seam pocket on both sides. This generally works fine with skirts but I noticed the pocket bags pulling the trouser side seams which didn’t look good. So, I added a little piece of cotton tape to the pocket bags and attached the tapes to the waistband to support the pockets. This worked perfectly.

The finished pair of pleated trousers

I like how these trousers turned out. Actually, they are the first ever pair of pleated trousers that don’t bunch up at the front for me. This is completely due to the work I did with my sloper. Also the back of the trousers sits nicely without any pulling or bunching of fabric anywhere for which I am super happy.

These pleated trousers look nice with a simple black top but can be combined with a cropped jacket like the Sew Over It Coco below. In fact, I was surprised how good the combination looked when I tried it on.

If you are interested in this or similar fabrics by Kultavilla, there are some good ones for sale at Ompelino. How do I know? I started working part-time at Ompelino atelier and fabric shop two weeks ago! Now I have a chance to find out whether I (as a self-taught seamstress) am cut out for the job!

Despite this disclaimer, this fabric or the post aren’t sponsored in any way. In fact, I bought the fabric and made the pair long before knowing I’d be joining Ompelino team (even though I did most of the sewing at Ompelino sewing cafe).

This is all for today! Thank you for reading and see you soon! Happy sewing!

Katja