I saw the MILAN AV-JC zero waste trousers advertised and fell a bit in love with them. They have a paper bag waist which does absolutely nothing for my waistless body, but I couldn’t resist. By the way, the black bits on these are the belt loops – so cool!

The pattern says to use a light weight drapey fabric for a fluid fit or cotton for more structure. I decided to toile them as a pair of shorts, I’m not sure why as it wouldn’t have taken much more fabric to make a pair of trousers, but I’m always looking for shorts.

Anyway, it was a useful exercise. As I would have guessed, I don’t like the waist design, nor the tied belt at the front. I do love the fit and the cute pleated back pockets which are the crotch cut outs. The fabric is extremely lightweight linen, although I’d prefer something a little heavier, so I thought I’d play around with a piece of fabric that I had dyed a couple of times. The first time was with Rosemary, which gave a rather dull grey colour, so then I overdyed it with leaves and an iron blanket. I got some really lovely, but subtle patterns.

For this pair I chopped the very top off, adding darts for shaping front and back and a zip at the back. I changed the belt from a tie to a double D ring fastener. The trousers are quite cropped, so I added 10 cms to the bottom, but 13cms will be better in future! The back pockets are very cool, length is removed by putting in three little pleats.

I can see that I will be making a few pairs of these. I love the fit and I can get a pair of trousers out of a small piece of fabric, so I’ve been exploring more suitable stashed fabric for future iterations.

It was chucking it down with rain when I took these photos, so I was confined to quarters, making the photos a little dark. I wore it with my Pattern Union Cora in this amazing French Terry from Knitwit. It is almost identical to the trouser fabric!

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All the photos I took inside turned out really grainy so I took a few more, but of course I waited until it was raining again so had to lurk outside the kitchen door!

I wanted to make a pair from a heavy wool that I bought at Knitwit a couple of years ago. I gave them an elastic waist, reduced the size, eliminated the belt and belt loops and didn’t bother hemming the bottom. I didn’t know if they would work as there’s nothing lightweight about them, but here they are in the wild with Sharon from Petite and Sewing and they performed perfectly. They didn’t even go baggy at the knees.

The pattern fits size 34-42, which is a 108cm hip, but it would be easy to make it bigger or smaller. It’s been released under a Creative Commons licence, but you can pay what you can afford, which is a good system. Finally a sewn shown seated shot.

Oh not finally! You have to have your end of post treat, I couldn’t resist this charming photo of Miss G having her hand kissed by one of her little friends at her birthday party. So adorable!

And I’m always pleased when she wears something I’ve made!

I need a pair of plane pyjamas for a long haul flight, and this trouser pattern will definitely feature as the bottom half. It’s a really simple, but quite fabulous pattern.