Today we welcome an international member to the sewing team – Annika, who sewed up the W pants. Read on to find out more about her materials…
Hi, Annika here from the Blank Slate Sewing Team. I’m so happy to be able to show you my first make as a member of the team. When I started sewing four years ago by following Melly’s tutorials and patterns, I would have never thought that one day I’d be on her team and even work together with her on translations of her patterns to German. Thanks, Melly, for helping me to grow my sewing knowledge and even starting a business in this field. Do you want to get to know me a little bit better? Then hop on over to my blog, Näh-Connection, after reading this post.
Well, let's get to the pattern that I chose for my first post on Melly Sews. I knew right away that I wanted to sew some pants for my daughter as her ankles show in all her pants from last year. I quickly decided to sew the W pants as I have had my eye on these since they were released through Pattern Anthology. I'm a total sucker for welt and zipper pockets and also want to practice zipper flys. Last, but not least I really like the W-yoke detail that adds that little pizazz.
I upcycled some of my husband's old jeans for this project. I cut a straight size 6. I could have downsized at the hips, but decided to go for it as is and to adjust the pattern for future makes if necessary. I had to realize that soon I'll have to put much more effort into upcycling jeans (i.e. unpick all the seams) to be able to fit all pattern pieces on the old jeans. For now everything but the waistband still fit on the legs of the jeans. I was too lazy to unpick the whole original waistband and thus just used shorter bands and pieced the waistband together. There are now some additional seams, but they aren't very obvious.
Overall I was really suprised how fast these pants came together. I sewed them on three machines at ones (two sewing machines and a serger) and got them done in about four hours. I recently won a sewing machine in a sewing competition in Germany, which ment that I didn't have to change threads for top stitching. Such a time saver! With denim I feel that top stitching is the way to go and it can feel as if you are changing threads after every seam (if you use another fabric, you might not need to do that much top stitching). This was actually the first time that I used the new machine. It's a bit more basic than my other machine, but it did a really good job dealing with all the denim layers. I used it for the top stitching, but might change this for the next jeans that I sew. The stitches aren't quite as regular as on my better sewing machine. This obviously is more important in the top stitching than in the construction seams inside.
As always with Melly's patterns I was guided really well through the whole construction process. Even inserting the zipper wasn't difficult. I love how these turned out. They are easy to style up and down and will go with everything from hoodie to blouse. My daughter is really happy about the little pink details that I added. I will, however, have to shorten the elastic in the waistband a little bit. It's currently a bit too wide which makes the waist drop too low and creates some folds in the front and back of the jeans. Ones that is fixed they will fit perfectly.
However, judging from the following, they seem to look really nice already: I took these pics at a family meet-up for my parents birthdays and my sister actually asked me to sew a pair for my nephew. That was the very first time that my sister asked me to sew something for him. He is very skinny and buying clothes that really fit him isn't an easy task. Hence, my sister wants me to sew him some fitting W Pants. Best compliment ever!
Last, but not least I want to make you aware of the tee that my daughter is wearing. As some of you might have recognized, it's a Beachy Boatneck. I sewed it 1.5 years ago for my entry for Secret Squirrel. It still is one of my daughter's favorite tees and no matter how short it is, she just can't let go of it. (Btw. the Beachy Boatneck is available in German in my shop and the W Pants will be available starting next week. So if you are deutsch, come on over!)
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