Accent strip on gym pants

How long does it take to make a pair of gym pants? Such a simple project and still not finished. It sums up my week, too busy to sew, too busy to read blogs (I’ve clicked the “mark all as read” button when the unread items were more than 400, so sorry I can’t read all your inspiring posts!).

Let me share what I did on these. I’m copying a detail from a rtw pair which was also in the Knip Mode gym pants, though I’m using the BWOF pattern now. I mainly looked at the rtw pair to see how the ‘piping’ was done. It isn’t really piping, it’s more a wider strip of fabric .

I’m sure my rtw was not exactly made like this, as the industry has special machines to make this, but the result looks the same.

I started with a strip of fabric twice the width that will be on the outside plus the seam allowance. Then sandwiched the strip between the seam, basted with a large zigzag stitch.

Then I serged the seam (this time with black thread, on my sewing machine there’s red and I didn’t want to change, no one will ever see this besides my blog readers).

The strip of fabric on the right side after serging the seam.

Now I folded the strip and pinned it. This is where the twice as wide as the end result is helpful. I folded till the seamline and the strip will be the same width and thickness everywhere.

Last step: topstitching with a longer straight stitch. This is where I examined my rtw pair closely, and it really was not a stretch stitch.

For topstitching I used a walking foot, to make sure it wouldn’t shift.

WIth only the waistband to attach and hemming to be done, I do hope it won’t take a week to show the result.

Have a great weekend everyone!