Black Ponte Pants

I recently decided to participate in the Wardrobe Basics Sew-Along put on by the wonderful Girls in the Garden blog. Our first order of business was what was called the black ponte pant!  Now this could not have come at a more opportune time. I had just received my Silhouette Patterns 3 Piece Yoga Pant pattern and had some gorgeous black rayon poly lycra knit left over from what I used on my bridesmaids dresses (more to come on that later!).

There is the front silly shot of me wearing my new Yoga pants. They fit perfectly and work well with heels which is important for work. Also, they are elastic waistband so they are extremely comfortable. Just like the description of the pattern, the pattern is 3 pieces. A front, a back, and a waistband.

Now I have made tons of pajama pants and I am perfectly comfortable at putting on an elastic waistband. In fact, I make all my pajama pants entirely on my serger. (It is a Babylock Evolve so it has coverstitch capabilities) So I did the same thing here. I used my serger for the entire yoga pant. Only my attempt at putting in the waistband was disastrous! It definitely was not the patterns fault, I think it was the elastic I was using. It barely stretched at all. I got some heavy duty stuff called waist band elastic or something. In the future I will just use the regular pajama or underwear elastic.

back view

So as a result of this heavy duty elastic, the waistband didn't stretch to fit quite properly. So I had to undo the waistband and I stitched it first on the sewing machine and then took it over to be serged and that worked just fine. I do not think I will need that extra step when I use the different elastic next time.

Ok so now for the fun stuff! Any of you who do not yet know about Silhouette patterns, Peggy Sagers, or their webcasts need to go over there stat! I say this because not only are all her webcasts amazingly useful, but she has one specifically on yoga pants! She shows you some neat tricks to get cool different waistbands and even describes how you can use this pattern with a woven for a more professional looking yet still comfortable pant! Now I know you all want a back view to see the fit so...here you go!

I cut a straight size 4 (the smallest size) and made no alterations whatsoever. I thought for sure I would need to shorten the crotch length or make the waist smaller or something! But nope! Not a thing. She even mentions that repeatedly that there are so few alterations people need to make with these specific pants because they are so forgiving. The one thing to take note of though is that the 4 is not marked on the waistband piece for some reason. All the other sizes are. But easy enough, I just used the same measurement as is between all the other sizes and used that to measure where the 4 cutting line would be.

All in all, I had a great experience and I am so excited to have the first item done in the first sew along I have ever participated in. I hope this inspires some of you to make your ponte pants! Lastly, I will leave you all with....

a silly picture of me in my new pants! You can see my review here.

P.S. The pictures on the front of Silhouette patterns displaying the garment are horrendous! HORRENDOUS! Just ignore them and look at the line drawing or a review on PR or on her webcasts. These garments can be truly gorgeous!