I’ve made a pair of culottes, or are they a bifurcated skirt? Hmmm!
This is a pattern that I drafted in my pattern making class using my pencil skirt block as the basis. This surprised me, I thought I would use my trouser block, but no, they are based on a skirt. Anyone who has a copy of Winifred Aldrich’s “Metric Pattern Making for Women’s Wear” will find the instructions on page 52 (in my edition).
We made a slight modification to the pattern in that we eliminated the inside leg seam, so the pattern looked like this.
You can see that the bottom of the culottes are folded up to fit on the fabric, and that I have drawn a tuck down the front. I had one yard of this amazing Irish linen given to me by Megan of Meggipeg when I looked after her gorgeous dog, Truffles. When someone gives me fabric, or even a fabric voucher, I take the make much more seriously. I thought about what to do with this fabric for a while and am thrilled that I have made a garment that has proven to be so useful. I am also really pleased that this is almost a “no waste” pattern. I only threw away the edges of the fabric.
The pockets were the pieces of fabric cut from the crotch, and I put tabs over them to just use up a tiny bit more fabric. By the time I cut two waistbands I had almost nothing left – yay! You can see the gorgeous colours in this fabric – it is like a shot linen, in that the warp and weft are different colours, but it’s quite subtle.
BTW, that left hand tab is straight in real life, I just had the waistband twisted a little bit. The invisible zip has now been made invisible! Here I’m wearing the culottes with a pink Scout Tee.
I gave the culottes a deep hem to give them a bit of weight at the bottom. They go really brilliantly with my apricot Bellini.
And here I have teamed them with a Eucalyptus tank from Megan Nielsen. The fabric for this tank was a teeny tiny silk chiffon remnant from Spotlight.
Thongs/flip flops are The Rubz, a Danish brand, which are made from carbon fibre and silver plated chain. They are exceedingly comfortable and I bought them from Heaven Wrapped in Claremont.
I’m going to make another pair of these culottes, but this time I’m going to flare them, as per page 53 in Winnie’s book.