Not so intimidating anymore

From the moment I saw the lounge pants in Amy Butler’s In Stitches, I was smitten.  This was two years ago, and I had barely a month of sewing under my belt.  Every delicious project in that book looked impossibly complicated to me, so after a month of drooling over the pants, the apron, and who knows what else, I gave up and put the book away on the shelf.

Since that time, I’ve taken on one little sewing challenge at a time, slowly building my skill set.  And wouldn’t you know it? I took that book down off the shelf recently, and actually understood most of the directions.  Not only that, but I found I didn’t need to read the directions as much as skim them.  Hard to believe I could have learned so much in two years without even realizing it.

These lounge pants are made from an extremely lightweight thrifted bedsheet, and will fill a void in my nightwear collection – I love all of my handmade pajama pants, but anything constructed from a quilting cotton is way too warm for a Summer night.  The weightlessness and flowiness of these should make them perfect for sweaty weather.

I veered from the instructions in a few places.  Most notably, I replaced the drawstring with elastic. I dislike drawstrings.  They add extra bulk in the tummy area, and I have enough unwanted extra bulk in the tummy area as it is, thankyouverymuch.  I also didn’t put any ribbon trim at the ankles, because I thought it might interfere with the flowy weightless factor, and make them too stiff.  I may still change my mind on that one, though.

I’m considering using the half of the sheet that I have left to make a Built by Wendy Simplicity 3835 shirt that I can use as a pajama top.  I don’t often wear pajama sets anymore, but something tells me it might just work for me in this case.  Either that, or maybe I can adapt a pillowcase tank tutorial.  I’ll keep you posted, if I do.

By the way, thank you all for the suggestions as to where to get cake flour yesterday.  I have always figured I could get pretty much anything I wanted in the stores around here, being so close to a major metropolitan area, but would you believe neither my regular supermarket nor the local Walmart carries cake flour?  Crazy.  I may try one more place around here, but if that fails, I’ll just go online or make my own.  Preferably before the blueberries go bad.