Tania Culottes

Guess what?! I’ve signed up to Sew My Style 2020 – it’s a sewing challenge which each month selects two sewing patterns for you to make, and if you sign up then you also get discounts on the patterns.  For January the challenge was to make either these Tania Culottes from Megan Neilson patterns, or the Kortney Bodysuit.  I was less intimidated by the Tania Culottes so I decided to make that pattern (though I have since braved a bodysuit, which I’ll post about soon).

1. The fabric

I decided to make this in a bright purple linen chambray which I bought from Croft Mill. It’s a little transparent and so I was a bit worried that I might have to line it (which I didn’t want to do as the pattern uses LOADS of fabric). Luckily because of the bulk of the material you don’t notice that it’s a bit shear.

2. The pattern

This is the first Megan Neilson pattern I have made, and I found the instructions really easy to follow – it helped that there are a few YouTube sewalong videos as well. I didn’t make any adjustments to the pattern other and I sewed a size 12. I bought an invisible zip in what I thought was the same colour but it wasn’t quite right.

3. The challenges

I encountered a few challenges with this pattern:

• The pattern pieces are HUGE and so it took me ages to tape together all the PDF pattern pieces.
• I struggled sewing in the zip, I ended up unpicking and resewing it about 5 times, but I got there in the end.
• You have to hang the skirt for a couple of days so that the bias settles; I did that but when it came to hemming it after I wasn’t quite sure how to deal with it. I ended up hanging it on a coat hanger, and then using a tape measure as I cut around to keep the length to the floor constant. I then evened out the rough cut edges, and then hemmed it. I think it worked okay.

4. The final result

I’m in two minds about these culottes. I like the summery feel to them, I love the fabric and I’m really pleased they look so much like a skirt. But unfortunately they are a bit tight around the waist on me, so they aren’t very comfortable to wear; also, when I sit down they bunch up weirdly around my crotch because of the excess fabric which isn’t very elegant!  I will wear them though, probably in the summer when I know I’m going to be on my feet for a while and perhaps I’ll be a bit smaller around the waist by then, who knows.

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