Making Birgitta Helmersson’s Pleat Pants
Some easy weekend sewing has been had, making Birgitta’s pleat pants from the Sewing Without Scraps book.
These are culottes-style pants, with an elastic waist, side pockets and a cropped length.
The fabric is a bit special. It’s some superfine premium merino wool suiting which is quite fluid and has a subtle charcoal stripe. It came to me via the mighty stash of L from Hallet Cove. As usual with suitings, it has the details woven into the selvedge.
My teen happened to walk by as I was cutting out and thought the reverse side of the text looked rather Tolkien Elvish-esque.
As the fabric has the details written on selvedge, I thought it would be good to leave it on the fabric somewhere on the inside, and conveniently it turned out to be the waistband edge. The instructions finish the inside waistband edge with bias binding, but I had the selvedge.
The front and back are the same, apart from the direction the pockets sit towards, so I put a label in the back for easy dressing (would recommend).
The pleat pants, in spite of their simplicity, have some interesting features. There are no side seams; the side seam pockets are inserted into slits cut into the sides, ending with a dart below the pocket.
The amount of fullness in the pants relies on how wide your fabric is – any fabric from 110cm/43″ wide to 135cm/53″ wide can be used. The merino suiting is 154cm wide, and seeing as I was making the second largest size (LL) I chose 135cm wide. They would easily look good narrower too.
Due to the cutting layout, the length of the pants is dependent on the size chosen; the bigger sizes are longer (but you could take any depth hem to make the length whatever). I’m 168cm/5’6″ tall wearing size LL; the model in the book is 162cm/5’4″ and I believe she’s wearing size M.
While we were making the patterns for this book, Birgitta realised that the same pattern pieces could be used for either pleated pants or a pleated skirt with side splits. Both have pockets. The pockets are excellent, by the way.
When I first saw these pants (we made informal show-and-tell videos to show each other what we were working on) I thought how wonderfully a black pair would go with my bias top from the same book. And now I have some.
I think these will go with lots of things – denim jacket, neat fitting cardigans, skivvies, vests and more I’ve yet to try out.
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They look fabulous on you. I’m about the same size. How much fabric did you need?
Thanks Helen. They used 172cm – the cutting diagram conveniently shows how much each size needs.
I’m intrigued but always a bit doubtful about zero waste designs, especially pants. How do they fit with the crotch curve being identical on the front and back or is there something else that happens when the pants are constructed to change this or is it a reliance on an oversized or loos fit garment negating this fact?
Culottes styles are different from trousers. Zero waste or conventional, they’re based on a skirt block rather than a trousers block, and can therefore be the same back and front. There’s a good diagram of this here: https://pattern-making.com/draft-culottes/
Thanks for the explanation.
Just lovely!
Thank you 🙂 And very comfortable too.
Hello Liz,
I appreciate all the effort on the information you have given. Thank you. It looks as though these are low waisted culottes. They appear to sit closer to the hips. Is that correct? If so, can the crotch depth be lengthened?
Thanks,
Susan
Thanks for reading, Susan. In answer, they aren’t low-waisted; they do sit on my actual waist, but I don’t have much of a waist! (I’m a “column”!)
Lovely. This is such a great choice for the suiting fabric. I’m imagining my alternate persona working in arts administration or a design firm choosing them for both practicality and swoosh factor.
Shows how important fabric choice is. The first ever garment I sewed was a pair of culottes. I chose a chambray cotton with white Swiss dots from a fabric shop on Magill Rd. It was for year 8 home economics and I still recall the detailed steps we took during the cutting process to this day.
I don’t think I ever wore the culottes though, just not the fashion for 12 year olds in 1992. And to this day I’ve been hesitant to wear culottes. This pair you’ve made? In a similar fabric? Quite possibly.
Thank you, and agree – the suiting worked very well. I think it might be the perfect marriage of fabric and pattern.
Did your chambray come from The Bargain Box on Magill Rd? I used to work there on Saturday mornings, around the same time as your culottes. It was a great shop.