My friend Tessa has been in love with her Greenstyle stride tights for long enough that I thought I should try out the pattern. I have a lot of leggings, but the ones I've made have been Megan Nielsen Virginia, which I have made many times, but apparently been silent about as no way was this leather pair my first rodeo, and Jalie Clara. And honestly the secondhand shops keep providing me with such great Lululemon that it's hard to keep in mind my goal of increasing the handmade ratio in my wardrobe.
So I had a look over this pattern. Went with size D as I thought a bit smaller would be the better choice. Tessa told me they are true to size.
I have these sports knits I got awhile ago, the patterned fabrics are from Mood, and the contrast are from a shop in the States, but I'm not sure where. Something with expensive shipping, and I think they are Repreve which is a recycled nylon blend with old PET bottles in it.
I made the pocket side version, medium rise, capri length for my first attempt. I initially froze when I realised the yellow is kind of transparent, but decided it's not really anywhere important enough to double layer it. While sewing these tights my coverstitch machine was still behaving relatively well, though it's gone to the dark side since then. It's very annoying when a machine you already don't like stops working well.
Putting these together was quite fun and satisfying once I got past the finicky pocket finishing, but I noticed right away as I sewed the curved panels that the two fabrics went through the feed dogs at VERY different ratios. I think on one side I had an offset of about 2 inches when I finished, and I was not pulling at the fabrics. On the other side, I had less. I followed the instructions regarding order of sewing and the backs matched up perfectly.
I tried them on and discovered that I had the worst leg twist known to man. They were twisting about 100 degrees, and both in the same direction (I think the twist is to the right). One leg (probably the one with that big offset) was super skewed and very loose at the hem. I engineered a fix by overlocking off the hem unevenly (a big chunk of pink and not much yellow) to bring it slightly back out of skew. This was like a 2" or wider chunk. It still is very obvious when they are on the floor, and the hems are a bit uneven because of that fabric twist. However once on my body they are ok.
And once on my body I noticed that the pockets are absurdly low. They like, aren't within reach of my hands. The pockets should be right where the side piece widens (according to Lululemon anyway) - so functionally they start where they should end. Having said this, I took these for a trial run to work in Thames, and wore them on a 12km adventure trail run and I had my phone in that pocket, and it was snug in there the entire time. So they still work fine.
I went on with the prettier fabric and this time did the high waist and the crop length, without the pockets.
I changed the order I sewed things in to see if it would fix leg twist - sewing both side seams the same side up. I also didn't sew the backs together right away, and the result is that they don't line up as well. Seems that in this case you are *well served* by actually following the instructions! Imagine!
The leg twist is slightly less and I didn't need to do any crazy fixes this time. It's not gone by any means. Unfortunately, the high waist is totally ridiculous. I have no waist. The midrise was high waisted on me. I should have known better. So this waistband is at my ribs and it's very tight, I will have to do something about it but I thought I'd wear them a few times first to figure it out.
Both of these pairs of tights are a little bit loose right at the top of the crotch, which is the most important spot for them to be snug. This makes me think I need to tighten up that area - it's much worse on the black pair so I will almost certainly have to deal with the waist and then see about adjusting them further to improve the fit. I believe the Jalie Clara were better in this area because of their gusset, so next time I feel like making leggings I might do those again.
This experience has left me very wary of sewing with sports knits. I didn't expect them to be any different from regular knits, but they are far more slippery and finicky. My experience was not improved because at the same time, I decided to quickly sew a Patterns for Pirates basic tank top with the super curved hem to match my new sportswear. (Beware of "quick sews?")
Putting the tank together was easy but then I went to the coverstitch all planning to hem it in one go, without ironing it in place or pinning or any prep, and that was such a bad coverstitch hem that I had to undo it. I tried to redo the hem, but it's too curved, and actually I just killed it and had to CUT OFF the entire hem and have now zig zagged it which is way uncool. So the PTSD regarding these sports knits is real, but is kind of my fault for thinking I didn't need to prep.
I don't think the leg twist is a fault of the legging pattern. I don't think I cut my pieces out off grain. I think it happens because of that curve across the butt with that stretchy fabric having variable stretch as it crosses the grain. The way I think you could try to fix it is by basting the pieces together with a sewing machine first, using an exceptionally wide stitch, and going from the hems up. I'm not tempted to make more of these to see, and although it's frustrating to have resulting clothes that feel "imperfect" they definitely look good on, I've already gotten compliments! And they work. Getting away from that RTW perfect mindset is such an ongoing struggle.
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