A favorite pattern paired with a beautiful fabric made these white lyocell pants an instant wardrobe winner for Kasey. The only thing that needed improvement was the pocket design, which turned out to be a quick and easy fix. Although the white lyocell twill is sold out, new colors are on the way this fall. Thanks, Kasey!
I made these pants a while back–January of 2025. I’ve been wearing them almost all year round, and I get compliments every time I do wear them. When my sewing friends see them, they want to know the pattern–and I can never remember! I did write about them briefly here.
They are Simplicity 8605, a paper bag waist, pull-on pant. I made them in white lyocell twill (Sold Out), which is a lovely, mid-weight fabric that drapes beautifully.
The fabric reminds me of sueded silk, and I’ve bought yards of it, having made it into several skirts.
For this pant the only real changes I made were to use a single, wider piece of elastic instead of doing double channel elastic in the waist. I also kept the hem pretty deep at about two inches, to help give it weight. I call these my Bruce Lee pants; in every movie (that I’ve seen), at the end he’s standing on top of something, victorious, with his pants flapping in the breeze. These flap wonderfully in the breeze too, thus, my Bruce Lee pants.
One mistake I made was to use the pattern’s pocket. While it might be OK for most, I found it rather narrow. I got tired of waiters walking up to me in restaurants and saying, “Excuse me, ma’am, is this your wallet?” When I sat down, it’d just slip out–not good! I pulled out my self-drafted pocket that I use for everything else I make.
Aside from which, I’d made the pocket out of white batiste–wrong color to choose! The show-through didn’t bother me, but I figured that’s now two reasons to do something, so I did.
I cut out the old pockets, cut new ones from a lining fabric that didn’t show, and sewed them in. Nothing fancy; I undid the waistband seam where the pockets were sewn in, then cut off the old pockets leaving about a 1-inch, I’ll call it a flange, and serged each pocket piece to each side of the flange, then sewed the pockets closed. I closed up the waistband and was done. A quick fix, just took a little imagination to figure it out!
As a precaution against doing it again, since I’ve done it twice already, the lining fabric now lives with the white lyocell twill.
No more lost wallets, and no more show through!
