Audrey is wearing one of my favorite trends-culottes! They are a great summer alternative for shorts. She paired the grey culottes with a printed linen top. Be sure to admire her print matching skills! You can follow Audrey’s sewing adventures at Sew Tawdry. Thanks Audrey!
My latest sewing projects are a pair of culottes and a jacket. I wore culottes many years ago and remember liking them a lot. The patterns is from Burda 4 2015, pattern 113.
The fabric is a tropical weight wool blend, 97% Wool 3% Lycra purchased from Roz at Sew Much Fabric . It is a lightweight fabric with some body, which was the Burda fabric recommendation. This pattern has deep pleats in the front and the longest darts I have ever seen in the back. They actually end below butt level. They look okay though.
The culottes are definitely comfortable to wear. For some reason the “legs” of my culottes look much wider than those in the magazine pictures. Ah well, perhaps because I am shorter and wider than most models. The waistband is about 2″ high which is great if you want to wear cropped tops without flashing skin. I made a semi fitted, waist length jacket to wear with these culottes. The linen print fabric was also purchased from SMF. The colors, white, gray and a light chartreuse (greenish yellow) are so fresh and calming. I liked everything about this fabric. The pattern is one of many McCall’s NY NY Collection patterns in my stash. They all have garments which were a little different from the popular styles back in the 1990’s, when they were issued, so I think that saves them from reeking heavily of that era.
Cropped tops seem to be very popular now. For the last couple years, Burda magazines has had patterns for many of them, but they are all too boxy for my narrow shoulders and the shapelessness overwhelms my top half. My “over 55 years old” interpretation of this trend is a semi fitted, cropped at the waist top, like this jacket. The jacket is unlined. I serged all the edges of the garment pieces to prevent raveling. This jacket was a fast, fun sew.
This whole outfit is so modern. I couldn't picture myself in a crop top, but this is a terrific outfit. Love the culottes too.