Almost a disaster! - Remodelling my orange tiger track pants.

 I found the original version of these, shown below, totally unwearable. I kind of felt old in them. And unstylish!

These were the trousers I made a few months ago that I just could not bring myself to wear:

So they had to go. Its really a very small change to make them OK and these became wearable for my every day life. So weird really because all I have done is add ankle ribbing. But my journey to this point was rather involved and not at all as planned.

Having made the decision to change them I also decided not to get rid of them. I toyed with just adding a row of elastic to the ankles which felt kind of 90s? Or maybe 80s? Not sure! But I was not convinced I would wear them then either.

I would have worn as PJs but such waste of good fabric. Thats the issue tho. I love the shiny shiny velvet tiger print but its just too much!

So then I spent ages taking them apart with the intention of recutting into leggings.

So, what I decided to do was cut the back centre panels of the leggings ( shown below) from the old track pants because I never wear them - so I decided to make them into a new item.

Using the same pattern as these green ones which I love but they are pretty worn now and this fabric would make a nice version of these I think - and be more wearable than my track pants. This was not, as it turns out, a good idea because at the very least these were a nice pair of PJ bottoms. The problem is I just never wore them as track pants they were just " too much" for me. So I wanted to recut into something new and not waste the lovely shiny shiny velvet fabric.

Well what a disaster. I intended to make them into these style of leggings and I checked the pattern fitted etc then cut the wrong bits!

I realised I had cocked up big time because the pattern parts would not fit onto the old track pants despite my previous planning had said they would, so I had a problem, because this meant I had trashed the track pants for nothing. 

So what to do - Well recut a new back panel of course and remake back into track pants since I still have some of this fabric and if nothing else I want to salvage for PJs. I am hoping the unused bit will be the same colour as the original cos they have only been worn a couple of times so washed once or twice at most so hopefully the back is the same shade as the rest of them! Luckily I did get the nap right when recutting the back panel so not all a distaster that day!

Oh disaster, disaster! I was so upset. I just could not believe this had happened. Its been a few years since I made such a bad mistake. So I gave up on that having trashed my last bit of fabric and I recut the back of the leg to remake the original track pants I had just butchered and I need to resew them back up.

And then try to get the leggings parts out of the remaining bits of fabric left over so now I have to resew the track pants and also make some leggings as well!

Then I cut out the leggings parts. But then I managed to somehow cut the wrong part - I cut the back side panels instead of front centre panels! Disaster!

And of course it also explained why the pattern parts would not fit. When I had planned I put the correct pattern pieces onto my old track pants but when I cut I used the wrong bits. 

Never cut things out after a hard day at work when you are feeling tired is what I would say after this mess!

Now after all this messing around I did not have enough fabric left for my leggings.  But I have remade the track pants using a newly cut back panel.

I then added ribbed ankles as I had originally thought about though I was going to just put elastic into them and I think ribbing works so much better, but at this point I was desperate.

I put the waistband back on. I did improve this on the original trousers because I rushed the first one to take them to Scotland and it was a mess so not the worst thing to redo that bit of these trousers either. 

The end result is I actually have made these more wearable or at least they feel better and I have bought more of the tiger stripe fabric from Minerva ( luckily they still have some left because its a sale item! Not that it helps because paypay is still someway off but if I delay buying this I may not get any more of it - meaning I have really trashed my fabric, and its just wasted - so now I am short of money as well and I cannot really aford this sort of mistake this month after already paying out for new tyres for my car. Life is never easy is it!!) so the leggings will eventually happen and now I will have to make two pairs of them so I do not waste what I already cut out. One with tiger centre panels and one with tiger side panels! 

So really this weekend has not been the best one for crafting!

Does this kind of error happen with things you do?

Bracken