Latest Design: Military Culottes

​Zipping up our latest design! Military inspired high waisted culottes for ya. For this design, we experimented with button holes, volume and our love for pockets.

Project Specs

• Drafting to final stitch took approximately  6 hours over the course of 5 days
• 2.5 Meters of army green polyester fabric
• 0.2 Meters of fusible interfacing
• 1 spool of green thread
• 1 medium sized button

• Buttonhole stitched on a Janome 525S
• Stitched on a Juki DDL 8300 and hand stitched
• Raw edges over-locked on a JUKI MO-6816 Industrial  over-lock (serger) machine​

​Fabric

​This gorgeous fabric was picked up in Calgary at Fabricland. Sheila makes it a point to do her fabric shopping rounds every time she visits her hometown. Yee Ha! This past trip she had to check in an extra piece of luggage just for fabric.

​Design Elements

These are definitely not your basic pair of wide leg pants. Here is some insight into our experimental process with the patch pockets and some sewing tips on buttons and button holes.

Oversized Patch Pockets

Not all pockets are supposed to be functional. Although, we did test it out and YES, you can fit a laptop in the larger pocket. Both side seams rock a smaller (usable) patch pocket.

We played around with the placement of the larger pocket (just on one side). Notice how the larger pocket is pulling the main pant leg? Due to its size, the side seams at the opening needed to be placed further away from the Center Back/Center Front of the body to avoid this. Nonetheless, we still love the drape of the over-sized pocket!

Waistband Button Extension

We dove into our big ol' button jar for this gem. You cannot see it, but it is an old button from Jacob! Anyone remember that clothing store?

Buttonhole Sewing Tips

1. Always test out a machine sewn buttonhole on scrap fabric (2 layers).

2. The buttonhole should be big enough for the button to slide through with a hair bit of resistance as it may stretch out over time.
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3. Trim down any excess bulk in your seam allowance, especially if placing a  buttonhole along a waistband. The more inconsistent the thickness of fabric under the foot, the more sensitive your sewing machine will be to not sew correctly.

Waist Darts

Given the high waisted waistband of these culottes we created shaping to hug our curves with straight darts in the front and back, radiating from the waist.

​Final Design

Voila! ​This was a quick sew, under a week, in between clients (sometimes not in between hehe). Almost no hand sewing was used for these design elements.

Happy Sewing!
Designed, photographed and written by Sheila Wong Studios