Imagining the Magi – a trousers cutting challenge

Next month my children will be in a Christmas musical play, which means line-learning in front of the bathroom mirror, Christmas tunes in everyone’s heads, and, naturally, costume making.

One of my girls is part of the Magi, and requires loose drapey trousers for her costume. I was given a piece of maroon polyester from the op shop to use.

What we really wanted was the wonderful, ballooning trousers worn by the genie and princess in the Aladdin movie, but we only had enough fabric for half a pair.

Instead, I had an opportunity to try out an adaptable-to-zero-waste idea I saw in Antonio Donnanno’s book Fashion Patternmaking Techniques Vol. 1 (Promo Press 2014). I borrowed it from the library ages ago and made a sketch in my journal. From memory, the book is a regular-ish patternmaking textbook but has a chapter at the end with examples of really interesting patterns, and this was one of them.

The trousers are made from two squares. Mine were 114cm x 114cm, because the fabric was 114cm wide.

The sides of the trousers are on the bias, and the centre front and centre back are on the straight grain.

The trousers are pretty quick to sew and would be even quicker with an elastic waist. Here’s what they looked like before the waist was gathered onto the waistband. They could actually fit any size; the waist is the only part that has to fit.

There’s loads of gathering at the waist, hiding that hastily-put-in zip. There was a separate strip of fabric left after cutting out which I used for a double fold waistband.

I rate these trousers a success!

Cheers!