Yes, these are pair of leggings.
No, they do not fit.
Does this make me sad? No, because I never planned to wear them.
Now after I have confused you completely, I will lift the veil of ignorance. These leggings will be an artwork. Remember I am working about the topic of women getting older, about the pressure of women’s bodies to conform to a much narrower set of norms than males’ bodies? This will (hopefully) be another fibre sculpture about exactly this topic. And as a basis I need a life-size female body. I already sewed the upper body minus the head and for the legs I imagined a pair of leggings that I will insert into the upper body. Later I will add hands and feet. But meanwhile I was fascinated by the pair of leggings (and also the body :-DDD) and could not resist to try them on.
me, playing a grumpy marionette and the half finished doll body
So far, I only made one pair of trousers, and these were wide pyjama pants made with a pattern from Asuka Hamada sewing book “sweet clothes”. And they did not fit well. Making trousers that fit is still very high up on my to-learn-list as I have real problems to buy them. With all this in mind I wanted to try the leggings on which were not meant for me but for an artwork.
And surprise surprise, they do not fit :-DDD But the issues I have with the fit are exactly the same I had with the pair of pyjama pants which means it’s worth to look into them.
For the leggings I used a free pattern from Mood Society, the Ixia leggings. I love Mood for the huge number of free patterns they provide but their sizing is not meant for my body as my bust size is Mood’s size 10, my waist size 16, hips are 14 and neck size 7… strange or? Besides I could not find for which heigth their patterns are constructed.
I haven chosen to use size 12-14 (the leggings pattern comes in double sizes, so it would have been either 12-14 or 16-18). The leggings you can see on me has no waist band attached as I do not need it for my life-size doll. And please be kind… looking at myself in piglet-pink colored leggings is not my favorite pasttime to rise my body-love but I try to own it through posing :-DDD
In my view the leggings:
Are too long in the legs
Are too wide in the legs from the knees downward
Are too small at my upper thighs
Have a too high rise at the front
Are too wide at the back waist, gap at the back waist
And are too low in the back over my big derrière
I already researched that there is a full seat adjustment which mainly lengthens the back seat curve. Problem is I also have a sway back which lead to the gap at the back waist. And the adjustment for this is to shorten the back seat curve… sooooooo this has me confused about how I should adjust the trousers (if I ever sew them for myself). If I understand it correctly if I lengthen the back seat curve the trousers will have the correct length at my back but will then gape even more at the back waist because of my sway back. I am not sure if a dart at the back would be the solution as I have never seen a pair of leggings with darts? Or if I need to use a sturdier fabric that pulls more to my body? And transferred to a non-stretchy pair of trousers what do I need to keep in mind to make them right for my body? I already can buy ill-fitting trousers which are gaping at my back waist and are too high at the front, sewing them was my idea of getting a better fit, not the same problems.
I hope your collective needlework super-brain will come up with some answers to my fit issues (which I know are not new). And also cross your fingers that I get this doll sewn up fast enough and that it will look the same as in my mental image :-DDD
Thank you @crosheille for initiating and @marblely for hosting the #needleworkmonday and the community builder team @lauramica, @romeskie and @kattycrochet I am so glad to be part of.
If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday on hive blog. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community. You can read more comments on this post on my hive blog.
Read more about my art und upcoming exhibitions on neumannsalva or buy some of my digital artworks on NFT showroom.
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