Pinterest can attest to my love of pink and red combos, but my wardrobe couldn’t, until now. Inspired by this post from The Fine Cloth Company which showed their candy apple red and bubblegum pink linens combined into a tiered dress, I went ahead and purchased The Exact Same Fabrics for my own colourblock adventure using the M&B Torrens Box Top and Glebe Pants.
I thought i might not like the combo for wearing as much as the thought of it made me chuckle (and also brought me pleasure) and I was kind of right. The combo feels rather conspicuous (d’uh Jess) and I’m left with the feeling that maybe I needed even more colourblocking to make this sit right with me (when in doubt, double down).
Fabric consumption: I purchased 1.5metres of each colour, and although I had enough, I ended up having to cut the red of the back as several pieces (through poor planning on my part). As you can see from the improv quilts in the background of the photo, I had lots of small pieces of fabric left.
The back of the pockets are self-linen (since they are visible past the slash pockets) but the front of the pockets are a viscose fabric (this saves fabric but adds some extra slink to my pockets).
The red fabric is opaque but the pink was letting things shine through (I don’t mind a bra but I draw the line at underwear), so I did a half lining using the method from men’s suit trousers which is to cut your pattern pieces sideways so that the bottom hem sits on the selvedge. This means you can skip hemming your lining, which is extra comfortable and doesn’t let any bumps show through your pants. They’re lined in the same opaque pink fabric I lined the pockets with.
However, for some reason the pants and the lining looked really tight on, there were all these extra drag lines.. basically, it looked really bad. This was my standard size for the Glebe so I think the issue was how my lining pants and the linen pants were interacting (the lining pants were attached through the pocket but not the crotch seam). I experimented with unpicking the centre crotch along the leg seam and this unlocked a lot of the tension, so I added a gusset into both sets of pants. Much better!
Speaking of doubling down when things aren’t working- When I’d decided that maybe this combo wasn’t working, I went back and ordered more of this fabric, with a plan to make an epic Waikerie Dress to wear as a duster with the outfit. Very much inspired by Garth Brook’s The Chase album cover, my duster would have pockets added onto the front to amp up the colourblock, and maybe I’d finally use that snap press that I bought so I could stop sewing buttonholes! Good things take time though, so I’ll continue procrastinating!
