La Maison Victor Lou trousers

Less than a week after my last blogpost a little girl was born. A year has already passed and it is amazing to see how a tiny baby evolves into a small person within such a small timeframe. Naturally, like every parent before us and every parent after us, we feel she is the most adorable, delightful and cute thing ever.

Also, a very time-consuming thing. I have sewn over the past year but nothing too complicated and there have been many weeks during which I didn’t even enter my sewing room. I am currently making an effort to sew more often because for me sewing is a relaxing activity. Creating something useful and beautiful gives my day just that little extra in between all the endless cleaning of messes, sterilizing stuff and wiping of runny noses that you have to do as a mother.

For my birthday my friends got me a subscription to La Maison Victor, because even if you don’t have a lot of time for sewing it is nice to get a little bit of inspiration in your mailbox every now and again. The September/October issue of 2017 has a pattern for baby trousers that I liked the look of so one day, when my daughter was napping, I decided to give it a go with a remnant of green sweatshirt fabric.

That’s the front on her bum, people!

I decided to leave out the drawstring detail on that first pair because it is purely decorative and finishing something quicker is a plus when you don’t have a lot of time. However, every single time my daughter wears that green pair to daycare she is wearing them back to front when I pick her up. Apparently, the curved line at the front screams “This is the back!” when there is no drawstring (my husband also put them on back to front the first time). Needless to say, the fit is not so great when you put them on backwards.

When they are worn correctly, I do really like them and since a lot of her trousers have suddenly become too short I decided to make another pair. This time I included the drawstring to avoid any more confusion. I used a nice thick organic sweatshirt fabric. The back of the fabric feels super soft and is a lighter shade of blue than the front which makes for a nice detail when the cuffs are turned up. The seams were overlocked and the hem was turned up and sewn down with a triple stretch stitch.

Changes made to the pattern for this second pair:

• Lengthened the legs by an inch or so because I figured that she can wear them with the cuffs folded up at first and that way she’ll hopefully be able to wear them for a couple of months longer.
• The pattern calls for 3 cm wide elastic but I only had 2.5 cm on hand so I made the waistband narrower to fit my elastic.
• Because I narrowed the waistband I didn’t bother with the original buttonhole markings of the pattern because the buttonholes would have ended up in the wrong position. When I made the blue pair I simply drew some markings on the fabric where I wanted them to be. Looking at the line drawings mine are probably spaced somewhat closer together than in the pattern.
• I forgot to interface the area around the buttonholes, even though I made a practice piece with interfacing to test buttonhole sizes. Can happen to anyone right? I think it will probably work without interfacing in this fabric since it is quite sturdy.
• The pattern has you thread the ribbon through the gap at the back of the waistband. Uhh, doesn’t it make more sense to thread through the buttonholes in the front since you need both ends coming out of a buttonhole? I also think it makes more sense to sew the ends of the elastic before inserting the ribbon.
• I think that a piece of ribbon or string that can be pulled out in a garment that is meant for young children is dangerous. Therefore, after threading the ribbon and making certain that both ends were the same length, I stitched in the ditch at the back of the waistband securing the ribbon in place. This also secures the elastic and prevents it getting twisted.

I like to freehand embroider the size in children’s clothes.