Finished Project: HotPatterns 1158 - Fast & Fabulous Tailored Trackpants

I finished these pants about a week ago, but in that time, we took a short family vacation to Mt. Rainier and have returned home, and it feels like I sewed these months ago instead of days ago. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to wear these since we took photographs because Seattle has been having yet another heatwave (with temperatures in the high 80's/low 90's), and it's just been too friggin hot for pants, even lightweight summer pants like these.

HotPatterns Fast & Fabulous Tailored Trackpants

Unless you've been living under a rock, I'm sure that you've noticed that lightweight/flowy pants with ethnic or tribal prints have been EVERYWHERE for the past few months. I wanted my own pair. I also thought that this would be a good choice for one of the five garments of my 2014 mini-wardrobe challenge. I would have loved to have made those ikat print pants that I had originally planned, but it became clear early on that I wasn't going to have the time to do them justice. I do still want to make them, but I want to take my time with them.

These pants were a good compromise. The pattern is the HotPatterns Fast & Fabulous Tailored Trackpants. I am amazed that I have not seen more versions of these pop up in the online sewing community. This pant style is very on-trend right now, and it didn't take me much longer to whip these up than a pair of pajama pants.

The back view is better than this, I promise:

HP Trackpants - rear view

The drag lines you are seeing are from my hands being jammed into the side seam pockets. These fall amazingly nicely from my ample rear end into the tapered leg shape that you see at the bottom.

For fabric, I used this silver dot print rayon challis from FabricMart. I'd ordered a second cut of challis in the same order; however, this cut was a little beefier. I thought that it would hold up a little better when made into a pair of pants. (Granted, these pants probably aren't going to last longer than a year of wearing and washing, but when you only pay $2.99 for the fabric, you can't really complain.)

Fitting/sizing and alterations

I found these pants to fit true-to-size for the measurements on the HotPatterns size chart. Per their size chart, I fell into a size 22, which is what I sewed. I know that sometimes their knit patterns can run a bit large, but I've not generally found this to be the case with their woven patterns. Note that these pants have a leg-skimming shape and are not a "skinny pant".

For alterations, I only shortened the inseam length by 2" (I'm 5'2"). I probably should have shortened them by another 1/2-1" if I wanted to be true to the envelope line drawing, but I'm fine with the length that their at now.

On a personal note...

On a personal note, when I was in Italy in 2009 for my honeymoon, I saw some of the Italian women wearing pants very similar to these in what looked like washed silks. They embodied the phrase "effortlessly chic". I coveted my own pair, but couldn't find a similar pattern. (At the time, Burda and European pattern magazines were bent on convincing us that harem pants were on their way back. Those were sort of close, but the pants I wanted definitely did NOT have a dropped crotch.)

Five years later, the trend seems to have finally made its way over to the US, and I am very happy to finally have my own pair.