A Pair of Hot Pink Pants

At our Bernina Mystery Make class at the end of April, the instructor, Sandra, wore a pair of knit ponte pants she had made from the Renee pants pattern by Jalie. The store ordered copies for the students that wanted one and I picked mine up a few weeks ago. After tracing my size—no mean feat given that there are 20+ sizes on the pattern—I set the pattern pieces aside with some hot pink knit ponte from the clearance bin at Joann Fabrics. It is their Casa Collection ponte consisting of 95% nylon/5% spandex. Ponte is a hefty knit fabric that is very stable and easy to sew.

I had planned to cut the grass yesterday, but it never got much above 50 degrees with intermittent showers. I gave up on mowing and decided to tackle the Renee pants, instead. The quilt store south of town would like to offer this as a class, so if I am going to teach it, I need to be familiar with the pattern.

Truly, the hardest part of this project was tracing the pattern, and that was already done. There are only three pattern pieces—front, back, and front inset—each of which is cut from two layers. This design does not have pockets, but it does have a faux pocket inset. I am not one of those women obsessed with pockets and prefer not to have them in close-fitting clothing, but if you require pockets in your pants, you might want a different pattern.

The faux pockets are attached to each front piece. Although the directions did not specify to do so, I topstitched mine down:

Ponte has a tendency to be “spongy” and not lie flat, and I thought the topstitching was a nice detail.

[I follow Sandra on Instagram, and she posted a picture a few days ago of a pair of Renee pants where she had done some machine embroidery on the inset piece.]

From there, it was a matter of making two tubes (one for each leg), putting one inside the other, and sewing the crotch seam. I was curious to see if I would need to lengthen the crotch seam on these. The pattern is advertised as being “high waisted,” but my definition of high waisted and other people’s definition of high waisted don’t always jive.

I had just enough 1-1/2” wide elastic in my stash to make the waistband, which is made by sewing the elastic to the inside of the pants, folding it down, and tacking it in place at the front, back, and side seams. I did two quick hems on the bottom and tried them on.

They fit snugly, as they are intended to, but not uncomfortably so, and anything with spandex is going to stretch with wearing. The pattern suggests choosing a size based on the wearer’s full hip measurement, which I did, and I made the waistband corresponding to the same size. I would not change either of them. I don’t think I will have to adjust the crotch length, either, as these do come up to my natural waist and stay there. What a pleasant surprise after years of pants not staying put.

When I was in Seattle in April, I bought a flowy rayon top in a navy, hot pink, and white geometric print, and it coordinates perfectly with the pants. I probably will wear that outfit to church on Sunday to see if I can stand the pants for longer than a few minutes. I’m not much of a leggings person because the spandex tends to irritate my skin. And I don’t know yet how much this ponte will stretch.

The quilt store has some Robert Kaufman ponte on order—the same fabric that Sandra used for her pants—which is a rayon/nylon/poly/spandex blend. I want to make another pair of these using that fabric when it comes in. I am not crazy about this waistband style, but that’s about the only thing I would change and even that is minor.

I made these using the Bernina serger for the seams, the Janome 6600P for the topstitching and the darts, and the Janome coverstitch for the hems. These could be made quite easily with just a sewing machine, however.

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I have had some requests to resurrect the husband’s blog on his website. I’m going to try to do that in the next few weeks, although I won’t post there as regularly as I do here. It’s not all that easy to ghost write a blog for someone else even though I never pretended to be him. I stopped updating it simply because it got to be a logistical nightmare. He has an Android phone. Getting the photos from his phone to my iMac is a Google-designed nightmare consisting of half a dozen needlessly-complicated steps. He had to remember to take the pictures, remember to transfer them to my computer (or remind me to do so), then give me a quick recap of the project and the pertinent details so I could sound reasonably intelligent when writing about them. When you come home after a 14-hour day of pouring concrete, helping your wife to blog about your adventures is not a high priority task. I did get some pictures of the slab and wall pours at Elysian’s, though, so I might do a post about that project.