The summer hasn’t turned out anywhere near as hot as promised by the weather people, so I’m not hanging out in loose dresses the way I thought I would. I really prefer pants if the temps are reasonable and you can never have too many of those. I’m still looking for the pattern that will make me look tall and slim when I’m not. 🙂

It always inspires me when I see somebody in the real everyday world in a great outfit, and I saw some absolutely fantastic looking culottes/wide pants/whatever the other day at the shops. Unfortunately she would have just thought I was a weirdo if I had waved my phone and asked to take a pic, but that silhouette did stick in my head.

So here is my take on it. She did wear a long tunic with those pants, and I have tried to reproduce that here with one of my old tunics with the extended sides. I think that hem is a bit dated now, although to me it still looks good.

Something shorter is probably more current, and because I can’t leave my fingers off the paint pots it has an abstract motif on it.

Here is a closeup of the culottes.

The second outfit was more motivated by an idea for the top. I love Paul Klee’s paintings and hope he won’t be turning in his grave at my interpretation of one of his works.

I wish I had used a lighter blue, but it’s hard to change and so far it hasn’t annoyed me enough to motivate me to do that.

The whole set looks a bit pyjama-ish, but I believe matching top and bottom is coming back. The pants are the Sew Liberated Arthur Pants pattern, the top my usual mutilation of the Tessuti Mandy. Yes, that’s a t-shirt pattern and for knits, but hey, I have made it work for about 50 woven tops so far, so don’t tell me I can’t.

The fabric I used is from a repurposed Ikea curtain. It’s a lovely light grey cotton chambray, thin enough for me to try a version of the Arthur pants that is almost as voluminous as the pattern designer intended. (Normally I use bottom weight fabric which necessitates cutting the volume down lots). The light fabric is easy to wear, but pockets were not an option as the pocket bags would have shown through. Maybe I will add patch pockets if this bothers me too much, but I think the fabric is too flimsy to hold up an iPhone anyway.

Linked to MMM.