Stylearc Tully Pants, Times Two

I have noticed in rtw, a lot of paper bag waisted pants.  Now these aren't my usual style, in fact, elastic waisted pants of any kind are not my usual style.  If I am truly honest, for most of my life, I would have been in the "not on your life" opinion of elastic waisted pants but enter middle age and the curse of fluctuating weight and the appeal is definitely there.  I am hoping to get to a point where my weight will stabilize and I can keep my pants for years and years and the need for such practical things as elastic will diminish but until then my reluctance for joining the fast fashion camp will mean that elastic will have to be my friend. 

One of the advantages of middle age, is that I have enough years behind me to know what does and does not work on my body.  The elastic waist of the Tully Pant by Stylearc combined with the extra height of the paper bag top on my short waisted, generously hipped, body is not my ideal silhouette.  Add to that the pleats at the front and these pants should not have been my first choice in a pant.  There was the niggling noise in my head that said that these pants may be a disaster but once I get an idea in my head, I am not easily swayed, even when all evidence tells me to run in the other direction.  So after much internal discussion, I hit buy now and the pattern was mine.

Now, even though I had just bought a pattern that should not work for me, I wasn't a complete idiot.  I did know that to pull these pants off, I would need a soft and draping fabric.  I knew exactly what I wanted and typically it wasn't in my overflowing stash!  A quick trip to Fabric Vision yielded a lovely piece of olive green heavy crepe.  I know, who even am I....olive green, incidentally also not my colour!  The bonus was though, the fabric came from the sale table and marked down at $6 per metre, it was a risk I was willing to take.

I had an idea, so as not to emphasize my short waisted torso too much, that I would reduce the height of the paper bag.  I ended up taking a full 1cm in height off the ruffle at the top of the pant.  I figured it would still retain the actual ruffle but be less obvious. Being that my fabric was a soft crepe, it would also be less likely to collapse.


The second change I made to the pants, was I inserted the elastic all the way around the waist to give the pants some structure at the front and to make measuring and inserting my elastic easier.  I then removed all of the gathers from the front section so that the elastic provided structure only.

I must say I am pretty happy with the resulting pants.  They are lovely to wear but I must say that in picking the olive green, I do find I am having problems finding anything in my wardrobe to wear with them.

Since I was pretty happy with my first pair of pants, I decided to have a rummage and see if I could find anything in my stash that I could make a second pair out of.  I came across a lovely piece of mid weight linen that I had used to make these culottes.  If I used a bit of pattern tetrus and put in a couple of sneaky extra seams, I could just eek them out of what was left over.  I had to add a piece where the elastic casing is and also piece the ties.  Because the linen is a little busy, it is just about impossible to see where I did this.  I used the same elastic insertion method as the first pair and once again reduced the height on the ruffle.

While this pair of pants are not quite as drapey, I actually wear these more, go figure!  I think because they are linen, which seems to be the it fabric of the moment, and the colours work better with the rest of my wardrobe, that these pants just fit in better.

Will, I be making more?  I would have to say, probably not!  These pants are more of a hero piece in the wardrobe than tnt.  They are fun and easy and comfortable to wear and in my opinion they were worth taking the risk.  Sometimes I feel I need to step out of my comfort zone or risk my wardrobe getting a little boring.