Cue: major face palm!

This was supposed to be an absolute no-brainer of a sewing project for me.

The Tania Culottes by Megan Nielsen is a pattern I have made several times before. Including the version I made last year which fits me perfectly and has all the exact modifications I needed.

These Tania Culottes are also sewn out of heavyweight ochre linen from The Fabric Store. There’s pretty much nothing easier to sew with IMHO than good quality linen.

But this simplistic equation erroneously excluded one unknown factor: my capacity for idiocy.

Well, that’s one volatile unknown factor for sure.

And so, the simple one or two night project, became an almost sewing disaster!

Ready to be entertained by my own incompetence??

Don’t worry, I’m happy to oblige with my tale of sewing woe. Because sometimes I think it’s very important to be reminded that no matter how much you think you pretty much know what you’re doing, human error strikes us all sometimes.

And every sewist can have a sewing disaster!

I really love the Tania Culottes

I just want to be super clear at the outset that I think that the Tania Culottes by Megan Nielsen is a fantastic sewing pattern. The fact that this pair was a near disaster was solely my own fault.

Let’s start with simple specs.

My Tania Culottes are a size large in the midi-length. I have added one inch to the rise to make them high-waisted and I’ve done some crotch-scooping for personal comfort. I also added pockets using the online tutorial. This adding of pockets was only necessary because I have a very old version of the Tania Culottes pattern which I purchased 5-6 years ago. Megan Nielsen has subsequently updated the pattern to include the pockets, so no hacking or fiddling around will be necessary for anyone with a newer version of the pattern.

And you know what – is was these darned pockets which were almost the death of me!

Anatomy of a sewing disaster

So, picture this.

Imagine my horror when, after attaching the front and back of my skirt together, having only one side seam left to sew, I held it up against my waist (yes, I know I shouldn’t do this without a waistband attached!) and discovered that it was about 3 inches short of being able to actually fit around my waist.

Even though I sewed it using the exact same pattern pieces as the one I had sewn last year which still fits me just fine.

I was bamboozled.

I put on the one I made last year. No, it still fit. There had been no unnoticed three inch expansion. I swore. I grumbled. I stomped my feet.

What was the problem???

How could this possibly have happened????

So, do you want to know the revolutionary simple thing which I could have done to have avoided the three-inch shortfall?

I could have properly marked the changes I made to the pattern pieces.

Mind-boggling, right?

So here’s what I managed to do.

When I sewed a pair of Tania Culottes last year, I made all the necessary changes to my pre-existing pattern pieces to add in the pockets. Because sewists need pockets.

What I didn’t do, is clearly mark on my pattern pieces every change I had made.

Then, when I pulled out the pattern this time, I could see that I had pocket pieces. I knew that I had updated the pattern for pockets, but, when I quickly glanced at my front leg pieces, it looked to me as though the side seam was still perfectly straight. So I just assumed that when I played around with the pattern last year I must have forgotten to cut off the ‘slash’ part for where my pocket facing would attach to my front skirt pieces and I must have just done this directly on the fabric. It’s quite plausible that I would do something lazy like this, so I didn’t question my assumptions too closely. If I had done so, maybe I would have looked more closely at my pattern piece and seen that it wasn’t actually a straight line like I had thought. But that didn’t happen. And since I hadn’t marked a nice big “triangle of pattern piece removed from here for slash pocket” on my pattern piece, I decided that I must now need to cut the ‘slash pocket’ part directly off the corner of each front leg piece. So I happily forged ahead, lopping off a pair of triangles which ended up taking about 1.5 inches off at the waistband at each side of the front leg.

And – lo and behold – my Tania Culottes were exactly 3 inches too small at the front, whereas the back fit perfectly.

So it turns out that the ‘slash triangle’ had already been removed from my pattern piece, I was just somehow too tired to see this.

And now I had a three-inch problem on my hands.

In some seriously valuable fabric!

The anatomy of a sewing solution

And so, here’s the fun part. How did I make a round peg fit into a square hole?

First, I simply stretched the sh*t out of the waist of my leg pieces. I have to admit, this was actually rather enjoyable after the amount of frustration I was experiencing.

After a sewing life time’s worth of hearing ‘be careful about stretching out your waistband’, it was kind of fun to just have at it!

But all my stretching efforts only brought me an extra cm or so. How dare you be so tightly woven!

More drastic measures were needed.

So I made the centre-front pleat of my Tania Culottes slightly less deep, buying myself almost an inch and a half of needed extra fabric. I, of course, made itsy-bitsy-teeny weeny side seams.

It still wasn’t quite enough so I finally had to move my pocket pieces slightly outwards, so I could use the pocket to ‘expand’ the length of the front waist. This involved making a couple of unsightly pleats in my pocket (on the inside). The pockets do not sit completely flat as a result, but with all the volume in these culottes, I think it’s not too noticeable.

And so, the three inch gap has been closed.

And I have a pair of ochre linen Megan Nielsen Tania Culottes!

Ochre linen love

I’ve been pining over the idea of some dramatic ochre linen for a while now. This project has been running around my mind for at least 6 months now – which is a long time for me!

I’m usually more of a ‘sew it up or move on to a new idea’ kind of sewist.

I was a bit disappointed to notice, after I’d already cut out my pieces, that the fabric actually had a bit of a ‘ladder’ with a couple of tiny holes in it. Right on my back skirt pieces – of course!

So I actually had to do a spot of darning before starting to sew.

Do you guys actually inspect every centimetre of both sides of a piece of fabric for imperfections before cutting? Is this something I should be doing? OK, you don’t actually need to answer me, I’m sure the answer is yes. But it just seems so exhausting!

This fabric also had another odd peculiarity which freaked me out a tad at first.

Whenever, I ironed it ( at least with my iron and in my sewing corner light), it actually appeared to change colour to a more reddish tone. The first time this I thought I had just completely burnt a section of my fabric.

But it was just a weird thing (maybe even optical illusion) which would fade as it cooled.

Oh my, the drama of this project!!

Zipper warning

I also did another silly thing when sewing these Tania Culottes.

I know, I know, sometimes my capacities know no bounds.

The pattern calls for a 9-inch zipper. The only thing my local store had in a colour which was vaguely similar was 8.5. I figured that would be fine.

It’s not. As, of course, I’d forgotten that I also increased the rise on my version of the Tania Culottes, so I actually required even more length.

Oooops.

In the end, I can just squeeze in and out of this, with a little bit of strategic wiggling. Let’s just say this isn’t a garment to put on in a change room environment when anyone who isn’t bound to me by blood or marriage can see me!

But I would definitely recommend considering whether you might want to increase the zipper length for this pattern in any event. I find that the way that the zipper finishes part way along the pocket, creates a possibility for an unsightly bump in an awkward position if your zip is not sewn perfectly. I would definitely recommend going for a zipper long enough to finish all the way down past the pocket, where the end of the zip will be less visible.

The evolution of indie sewing patterns

Even amidst my various self-induced disasters, sewing this pair of Tania Culottes did give me a chance for some reflection.

As I mentioned above, my version of the Tania Culottes pattern is a really old one.

And it’s interesting to look at it again as an indicator of how much we have grown in our expectations from indie sewing patterns.

This old version of the Tania Culottes comes in a mini-length version only, with instructions for extending it yourself to get it at different lengths. There are no pockets, no options.

In contrast, the updated version comes with 4 different views of different length and fullness options, as well as those blasted pockets already being included!

There were also some areas where I found the instructions of my version a little basic: things like “install the zip using your preferred method”. Of course, having said this, I sewed my first version of the Tania Culottes about 5 years ago as a beginner sewist, so even the ‘old’ instructions were obviously sufficient!

It was interesting, however, to look at my ‘old’ indie pattern and think about how much the expectations of the sewing community have grown. It’s like a happy creative circle in which indie pattern designers encourage modern home sewists to level up their sewing game and then sewists help to re-shape the expectations and practices of those designers in terms of the patterns they produce.

I’ve never actually sewn with the new, improved version of the Tania Culottes pattern, but I’m sure it’s stellar. So, unless, like me, you’re sitting around with a 6 year old copy of the Tania Culottes, I’m sure you’re unlikely to encounter any problems.

And, honestly, even if you do, it’s worth struggling through them as the Tania Culottes are up there as one of my top 5 all time patterns!

After all, how could anyone not love this????

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.