Expresso Elastic Hack

Beware sewing interwebs, Cake Patterns is hosting another sew along for it's latest pattern release and I'm part of it! Go Esme House!

Since Steph released a whole mini collection and not just a dress this time we get points for all the leggings and clutches we sew up as well. I cut out three pair on my first day and am now ready to insert the elastic waistband. I use a slightly different method, I don't even know if this should even technically be a hack...

1. Cut the elastic to your exact measurement. Instead of overlapping and sewing down the elastic, butt the two pieces of elastic against each other and stitch to a piece of woven fabric.

2. Stitch a lot! I prefer and used a zig zag stitch on my leggings.

2a. Trim fabric to stitching lines so it is invisible from the front.

3. Mark center back off to one side of join.

Center front and center back read to be pinned to my leggings.

Continue on following the expresso directions. This gives you a waist band with no lump at all! What do you think?

Testing Testing, Read All About It! Expresso Customized Leggings Take The Cake!

Whoo Hoo! The Christmas Elves are happy tonight! They're sorting through the stash to find lots of legging fabrics to keep them warm as the work!

Fabric: 4 way stretch swimwear fabric that I'm pretty sure is almost 100% spandex bought many years ago when I first started sewing with knits. I didn’t know much about them and this was in the dollar bin. It’s the piece of fabric that just keeps on giving. It has so much stretch and recovery I didn’t even have to put elastic in the waist band. They also stretched out super long so I can use them as footies if I want.  This fabric has always been cool to the touch and when I wrap my legs in it I’m actually colder wearing them than I am bare legged. Which defeats my primary purpose in wearing leggings: to keep me WARM.

Pattern Details: Using Cake's measuring tutorial and template I was able to easily draft my specific size leggings even even when my measurements fell in between some of the numbers. I'm 5' 10" and was interested in seeing how these would do in length. It was very easy for me to add an inch at the bottom to make sure these cover ALL of my legs.

Using the stripe/stretch line meant these stripes practically matched themselves, much to my delight.

There's not much more I can say about them. If you're like me, quit dreading and putting off the measuring. Draft those buggers and get to sewing! I see a new addiction coming on!

As you can see, I feel like a happy elf in them. These will be put in costume rotation because they make me too happy to get rid of. Anyone know of any elf parties happening?