Taking it in my Strides

 After lockdown began, I decided to make Greenstyle Creations Stride Leggings.  This pattern had been in my collection for a while but I had put it on the back burner because my Coverstitch machine and I have a love hate relationship.  When it is going well, I love it but more often than not it takes a bit of faffing around to get to this point.  I really do not have the patience for when machinery does not do what it promises on the packet.  So my Janome Coverpro remains a very expensive tool for hemming.  One of the things I was determined to do during lock down was to get to grips with it once and for all.  

I had a piece of this lycra swimwear fabric leftover from when my son was in swim squads.  It isn't high quality fabric and I certainly didn't love it so was the perfect candidate to experiment on.  My daughter donated me a black piece of nylon spandex to go with it.  I had my doubts about the amount of stretch in the black piece but thought it worthy of a wearable muslin.

My plan is was to overlock the seams together and then coverstitch them with black thread.  This worked for the first few seams but then started to skip.  After unpicking one seam a couple of times, I gave up on the coverstitching and decided to reverse overlock and just machine stitch down the seam.  By the time I got to the point of adding the waist yoke, I had given up on even this plan and just overlocked the seam right sides together.

What do I think of the result?  Well, the drafting is really good, and I love the pocket.  The pocket in all honesty, is the reason I chose this pattern in the first place!  But making leggings, I am not so sure!  Yes, it is nice to be able to make leggings with pockets and in the prints that I like, but really, leggings are stretchy so rtw fit just fine.  Will I make another pair?  Yes, but only because I have more lycra in my stash from swim squad days.  When all of this has gone, I think I will stick to ready to wear.

I wore my new leggings on a walk on The Port Hills today.  It is the first weekend under level 3 restrictions in New Zealand which means we are allowed to drive up to 40 mins from home, for exercise in our lock down bubbles.  Today's walk fell into that category.  It is really good to get out of my neighborhood and see some different scenery.  We left home at 8.30am and by the time we headed home it was getting very busy.  I wasn't surprised when lots of other people had the same idea.  

Fabric (leftover) $0.00
Elastic (from stash) $0.00
Pattern $15.00
Total $15.00