Lotus Legging

Hi, garment sewers. In this video, I'm talking to you about sewing up the Mood free pattern, the Lotus Leggings, which is an awesome legging pattern. It's got a lot of cool details to it. And it sews up really fairly quick and easy, but the details that you put into it just make it look so super cool and take it to the next level. And I love this fabric too. This is the UV protective stretch Ultrasuede that they use in the tutorial post on moodfabrics.com for the Lotus Leggings. It's got this really nice feel to it. It's got great stretch. It's got a little bit of weight to it without being too bulky. And it just, it's so super soft and feels great to wear. So it's highly recommended, this fabric. And before we get into actual sewing, I wanted to talk a little bit about the pattern too. So we'll talk about the pattern. I'm gonna talk about the pintuck details on the thigh panel, and I'm going to talk about inserting the zipper in the ankle of the leggings as well. So for the pattern, you can use the size chart to a point, but measurements like thigh circumference and calf circumference become really important when you're sewing a fairly tight-fitting legging. So those measurements don't come on a size chart, so I recommend measuring the pattern, measuring the size lines, taking into account that they have 1/2-inch seam allowances, and then measure yourself and reference that. So measure thigh circumference, calf circumference, even ankle circumference to make sure you're gonna be able to get these things on. So measure yourself, and then I would still recommend going up a size line. It's a lot easier to take something in, use a little bit of a thicker seam allowance than it is to let out a seam allowance. You can only let out a seam allowance so much. So I do recommend going up a size, just to be on the safe side. So once you decide what size you're cutting out and get your pieces cut out, let's talk about the thigh panel with the pintuck details. So this thigh panel, you can do it in... I mean, you can cut it in just regular fabric and just do some topstitching details at the seam lines, or you can cut it in a different fabric to get the little color block detail. But this pintuck detail adds such cool texture, and it's such... It's like that moto legging style kind of with the ribs. It's just such a cool texture. And then you've got the knee darts, and then here's a close-up of the zipper, which is super cool. It's a nice detail. But the pintucks, I thought that was just such a cool texture detail, and I wouldn't want anyone to miss out on that style just because they're intimidated doing pintucks. If you've never done it before, it can seem kind of scary. But on moodfabrics.com, they show you how to do it without a twin needle just by folding the fabric and stitching, which is a great option. But I wanted to show you how to do it with a twin needle. That's my favorite way to do pintucks. It takes all of the guesswork out of it. Essentially, you're just stitching straight lines and using the edge of your foot as a guide. So it's so easy. You don't need a pintuck foot either. I'm just using my regular presser foot and using the edge of the foot as a guide. So here's a little bit left over of my pintuck panel that I stitched, and you can maybe see on the back, I had to change my bobbin thread a lot. A lot of different bobbin thread colors in there. Doesn't really matter what thread you use in the bobbin. That's gonna be on the wrong side. But it's still... The panel still has great stretch because you're essentially getting a zigzag stitch on the wrong side of the fabric, going in between your two parallel lines of straight stitches from your twin needle. So you don't have to stretch the fabric at all as you're sewing it. That stretch is gonna be built right in to the stitch. And we definitely want stretch in that panel because it's gonna be stretching around the circumference of your body, the circumference of your thigh as you're wearing it. So to make sure you have enough fabric for this pattern piece, I cut myself a chunk of fabric that was three inches taller than the highest point of this point 'cause it's at an angle. So three inches higher up here and then three inches extra below. And I didn't use all of that buffer. I probably only needed like two inches, but I would get real nervous if I got down to the last little bit. So I cut a little bit more than I needed, just to be on the safe side. And I did my panel twice the width of this pattern piece plus like an extra inch on each side just to be safe. So I did it all for both pieces. I did it in one long swath, and then I cut a pair. So I cut and then flipped and cut again to get them in the right orientation and to have the pintucks going horizontally across the pattern piece. Make sure you cut yourself a big enough piece. Note the grain line on all your pattern pieces. And then I'll stitch a couple of pintucks for you to show. So a note quickly about twin needles. So twin needles come in different sizes. There will be two numbers on the front of the needle. This one says 4.0/75. And the 75 is your needle gauge, and you'll be familiar with that. On any needle packet, it'll tell you the gauge, the size of the needle. So that's what that second number is. The first number, this one, it was four. And this is a variety pack. I have 1.6, 2.0, and 3.0. And the bigger those numbers... Can get it to focus. The bigger those numbers, the wider the distance between the needles. So the 1.6 is the needles are fairly close together, and the 4.0, they are further apart. Twin needles go up to, I think, 5.0 and 6.0. So you can see that. You can see the difference in those needles. So I used a 3.0 width, 3 millimeters, which basically means that the needles are 3 millimeters apart. So it's a 3.0 size twin needle. And you wouldn't wanna use anything smaller because the suede is a little bit thick, a little bit bulky, and anything smaller, you're not going to get a very raised pintuck. It's going to be a lot flatter. And if you wanna use a 4.0 or a 5.0 twin needle, that would work fine. It would just give you a little bit of a larger pintuck. It would be a little bit more raised because there's more fabric that it's pulling up. So I have a 3.0 twin needle on the machine. I'm using all-purpose thread. And I've got my extra spool up here for the second needle. I'm using a high-contrast thread so you can see it, but on your leggings, you're gonna wanna use a matching thread so that it kind of blends in and you let the texture kind of speak for itself. So I also have my needle bumped over to the right so that the left needle is at about center. And that is gonna make my pintucks about 1/4 inch apart. And you can stitch a couple to test it out, experiment, but 1/4 inch apart was a good distance. I liked that distance. I did, I think, 31 pintucks on the panel to make that pattern piece fit. And it takes some time. I cranked the speed up on my machine to kind of fly through 'em. It's also important to bump your stitch length down. Mine is at a 1.3. Might even wanna go down to a one. And you want to increase your tension. And the amount that you need to increase the tension depends on the fabric. It also depends on your machine. So since this fabric is a little bit heavier, I increased my tension almost all the way up to a nine. It's now about a 8 1/2. And you can play around with that and see the different settings, the different sizes of pintuck it will give you. It's important to have your stitch length fairly short for the formation of the pintuck and also to make sure you have a lot of stretch built in. If your stitch length is higher, you're gonna get a flatter pintuck, and you're not gonna have as much stretch in the seam of the pintuck. And these pintucks, they're essentially just like ridges kind of. It's not a full fold of the fabric. It's just sort of rippling it up, which is a nice subtle detail. And then on the back, you can see that really well 'cause it's in white. It's just a very narrow zigzag stitch, which is great because it has a lot of stretch in that seam. So those are about 1/4 inch apart. And because we bumped our needle over to get that 1/4-inch distance between the tucks, we can't stitch one this way and then turn it around and stitch the other that way. You got to take it out and go back to the beginning each time, which is fine. You get a lot of thread tails after you've got 30 rows of pintucks. But it starts looking super cool when you have a whole bunch of rows of tucks together. It just creates that textured look, which is super cool. So doing pintucks with a twin needle, super easy. Make sure you choose the right millimeter width of tuck for the weight of your fabric. Bump your stitch length down and your tension up. And it's super easy to do. So that's pintucks. The next part of the Lotus Legging that I wanted to demo for you today was the zipper at the lower edge. So I'm gonna get my regular needle back on the machine real quick. After you do your pintucks, make sure you put your stitch settings back. Turn your tension back down. So for this zipper at the ankle, what you wanna do is independently, before you stitch the side seam, we're going to stitch a little box. So you have this little flap here at the ankle. So there's how it's oriented correctly. So you've got that little flap. So what you wanna do is stitch yourself a little box. So this is one inch wide. It starts right at this little corner here where that flap kind of goes out. So I stitched in until I got to one inch, not a one-inch stitch, but one inch from this raw edge here. And then pivot and stitch down so that I have a one-inch-wide box from here down to the lower edge. And that's essentially just a guideline. You could just mark your one-inch box, but I like having those stitches there, especially at the upper edge, 'cause we're gonna clip into the corner and kinda create a little box here. And those upper stitches just kind of make sure that your fabric isn't going to tear at the corner or anything. So it's just a little bot stability. So once you got your one-inch box stitched on both sides independently, then we're going to match the raw edges and stitch that side seam. So I'm just gonna stitch the lower part of the seam. I'm stitching in a contrast thread so you can see it. It's also worth mentioning before I move on too much further, these knee darts, I cut open those knee darts and graded the seam allowances. So that upper seam, once I cut it open, cut that dart open so you have two seam allowances essentially, that upper seam allowance I graded down by about half just to get rid of some of that bulk that we're gonna be stitching into the side seam. So I have my legging front and legging back, and I'm stitching the side seam. And I am going to use a triple-stretch stitch here, simply because I know when I go to pull on my leggings, I do stretch that seam. So I don't wanna be popping a seam there. So when we stitch this side seam, we're going to stitch down to that box, that box guideline, but stop at the upper edge of that box. So there's my side seam, but I stopped right there so that this is still open, that lower about seven inches for your zipper, for your little short zipper. What we're gonna do with your snips is we're going to snip. You'll wanna do this independently, so each layer separate. We're gonna snip in to that corner. I'll snip one, and then I'll show it. And you wanna get really close into that corner without cutting those stitches. We separate the layers here. So I clipped into that corner. We'll do the same thing on the other side. So now what you're going to wanna do is fold that one-inch box, that one-inch seam allowance. Fold toward the wrong side, right along that stitching line. And that upper edge is going to get folded up. So you're essentially creating a little box for this little zipper to go into. You might wanna... Or you might end up clipping out some of that bulk along the upper edge. So I have essentially a little box. So that upper edge gets folded up, and those sides get folded along the stitching line. So on the right side, I have this nice, neat little box for my zipper to go under so that I can see that pretty zipper tape and the cool metal teeth. It's gonna wind up looking like that. So you can use pins. If you have this kind of sticky tape, you can use that to adhere your zipper down. I like this sticky tape. A bunch of different brands do this tape. I like this one, this is the Singer brand of tape, because it's not... You don't have to use an iron. It's just like double-sided tape. Just push and then remove the backing. And then your zipper will adhere to that. And when you stitch this one-inch box down here, I used contrasting thread 'cause I wanted you to be able to see it, but you would definitely want to use matching thread because while we are trying to fold the fabric back along that stitching line, sometimes doesn't go the way we want it to. And you might be able to see some of that thread on the right side, so I'll use matching thread. So I'm going to put the zipper stop, that metal stop, just inside of this box. And I'm trying to center it so that the zipper is just centered. And then at the lower edge below that head of the zipper, you're gonna have a 1/2-inch or 3/4 of an inch for your hem at the lower edge to fold over that tape. I'm gonna throw some pins in, but I'm gonna put my pins in on the right side because I'm gonna be stitching this from the right side, 'cause I wanna be able to see what I'm doing and how it's going to look when it gets stitched down. If you need to make any adjustments, this tape is... It's temporary, and it's easy to unstick and restick wherever you need it to be. All right, that looks pretty good to me. I've got that zipper pinned in there inside that little window that I created in the seam. Now, with the zipper foot on the machine, you'll just start right here and edge stitch up there. Pivot and stitch across and then back down the side. And then at this... See, at this edge, you're just going to fold once your zipper is stitched in. You're going to fold this under. And that is going to become your hem. Same thing right here. Fold that under, and then that is your finished... Get that out of the way. There we go, and then that is your finished lower edge. So once you get your zipper stitched in or your hem, you're gonna wanna stitch the inseam. So once your zipper gets stitched in, stitch your inseam, this side. And then once that is stitched, you can unzip the zipper, and that makes it really easy to do the lower edge hem because I know that ankle circumference is, can be pretty tiny. But once you stitch the inseam, you simply unzip that zipper. And then stitching the hem is just this little bit, and you can open it up. And you can see my hem. I have that folded under. And I trimmed off a little bit of the zipper tape on that side 'cause I got it... When I folded it over, it came a little crossways. So I trimmed that off. This folded over about 1/2 inch to the wrong side. And then to edgestitch, or not edgestitch, but to topstitch that, I used a triple-stretch stitch because I'm definitely needing stretch in that ankle seam to get it up over my heel. So making sure you have stretch in that seam. So I use my triple-stretch stitch and a coordinating thread, and that folded the zipper edges over and finished off my hem. So edgestitching that zipper is actually super easy to do using your zipper foot. The hardest part was, for me, was stitching that box in the side edge independently and just getting all of that set up. But once you get here, super easy, throw your zipper foot on so that you can get your needle close-ish here. And I actually start here, I would start stitching here, and when I got a couple of stitches down, you can move the zipper pull as much as you need to. And then when you get down here, you can pull it back up and finish stitching around, then move it as many times as you need to to get it out of the way so that your zipper foot isn't gonna knock into it as it stitches around it. So that is the zipper, and then from there, you're stitching your inseam, lower hem, and then putting your two legs together and doing the waistband. But I wanted to demo those pintucks for you and that lower edge zipper so that you're not intimidated to make these leggings because they are super cool. So I hope that helps, and I hope you enjoy those Lotus Leggings.