Color Block your Trousers

I have been really frustrated lately because I have not sewn in months! I am making myself complete all the "little" projects that are cluttering up my sewing studio. These trousers are one of those projects.

 

The fit of these linen trousers is pretty good but, a little short in length for my 5'11"body. Too short is probably my number one reason for not purchasing a pair of pants- but I digress. I'm not sure how I came up with the idea of sewing a swatch of fabric to the bottom but, that was the plan.

Now the proportion of the contrasting fabric to the pant leg was critical. I tried to just eyeball it but, then I remembered an article on proportions that actually had contained an equation for historically proven "correct" proportions ( author measured ancient Greek and Roman sculptures ).
Basically it is dividing a length into 5 equal sections and then the equation is 3 to 2. So the length from the knee on the trouser to the hem was 19" divided by 5 equaled 3 7/8". I multiplied 3 7/8" by 2 and that equaled 7 3/4". And that's how wide I decided to make my bottom band of contrasting fabric.
Explaining math is almost harder than DOING math!

I clearly marked each fabric leg piece that had been cut off the original trousers left and right and front and back. And then completely removed all stitching to use pant fabric as the pattern for the contrasting fabric. It also became the stitching guide so the contrasting band and pant leg would fit together exactly.

I sewed the side seam and inseam exactly like the pant seams and then hemmed the bottom before sewing the contrasting band to the pant leg. The pant and contrasting fabric are both linen so with a little steam and pressing the transition from original pant to contrasting band is pretty flawless.

And voila! 

I totally dig my new color blocked trousers and best of all it is one more to-do project that is now DONE!

Tie One On...your shoe!

I photographed these flats because I really love the floppy, messy fabric embellishment. Almost like tying a scarf on your shoe ( and I'm a big fan of scarves ) plus I knew I could easily replicate this look.

None of my shoes are safe from being altered and these plain, cheap gray suede flats were just screaming out for the floppy fabric embellishment. I selected these possible fabric candidates from my far too numerous tie collection.

I really like using ties for projects because the fabric is already cut on the bias so easy to manipulate, prints are usually small, and the fabric is always a nice silk or silk-like textile. Just remove the stitching and interfacing and iron the tie fabric flat. The only downside is that ties are not very wide. I managed to squeeze two nice 4" sections that sewn together gave me a 24' strip.

The strip was sewn into a tube and cut into two 12" lengths. I did not iron the tubes flat because I wanted the messy look-not crisp edged bands.

The fun was arranging the fabric strips on the shoes. I finally settled for this look and pinned down the fabric. Now I can't find my pliers which I will definitely need to pull my 2" millinery needle thru the shoe and fabric. I always anchor shoe embellishment with some stitches because I don't entirely trust glue. However I have purchased Magna-Tac 809 permanent adhesive by Beacon and it's pretty good stuff.

So one thrift store tie + boring gray flats = a floppy, messy new look