have i mentioned how hard it is to be 4’11″ and find fun, flowy pants that fit? and i’ve got curves sew the kids department doesn’t work for me (believe me, i’ve tried). again, i thought i would try my hand at making a pair of pants that i can hoop in, out of this wonderful, soft, earthy, green jersey i found for $2.00 a yard out of a scrap bin. as always, it was a learning experience and didn’t go off without a few hitches. i traced another pair of pants (making some changes) and used that as a pattern. 
i freehanded the flare at the bottom sew somehow, i ended up with a shorter hem length in the back than the front. and, i pinched the fabric by the knee while serging but you can’t really tell. everything was fixable enough and none of my mistakes are very noticeable at all. side note: serging brings a whole new meaning to “making a mess” for me. 
i keep wondering what can i do with the scraps? there’s gotta be something useful to do with them. maybe make hair falls out of them…anyway, after i proudly finished up the pants, i thought i should make a top to go with them. i decided on a lovely halter top out of brown and green. i ended up using a brown, cotton, stretchy, long sleeve, tee shirt for the body of the halter and the same green jersey for the top part. 
i cut off the bottom of the brown shirt and did some nipping and tucking to make it more fitted. then, i cut out two tear drop shapes from the green jersey, stitched them together at the top, gathered them to fit, and pinned them in place. after attaching them to the brown shirt bottom, i then sewed pieces of brown shirt scraps across the front in a zig zag pattern to um, hold my junk in place. at this point, i fine tuned all of the seams, fitting the shirt exactly to my body. 
i was pleased, but thought the outfit needed one more thing to make it complete. gauntlets, of coarse! i made them out of the sleeves from the brown shirt by first, cutting off 12″ of the sleeve and keeping the bottom hem. next, i cut thumb holes in each sleeve. then, because the sleeves were quite loose, i turned them inside out and serged over the original seems until i was happy with the fit. i left the top unfinished sew as not to hinder their natural stretch. 
they turned out great! here’s a look at the entire outfit (minus the gauntlets) i took the outfit for a test drive by wearing it while hooping and, to my delight, everything stays in place! (there’s nothing more embarrassing than accidentally flashing your audience.) i’m pretty happy about the way everything turned out. 
each of my mistakes ended up being an excellent opportunity to try something new and to make it work. i used every piece of the original shirt because after all was said and done, my boyfriend ended up with a tiny shrug to wear…isn’t he adorable?
Tags: deconstruct, hoop clothes, pants, reconstruct, repurpose, serger, top