Crazy for Culottes

Hello friends 🤗 so for this post I give you guys a step by step process on how to make a staple wardrobe piece for the spring - culottes. Although you might not know how to pronounce them (trust me I can’t quite say it either), I’m sure you’ve seen this trendy take on you middle school gauchos everywhere. But before I get into how I made these babies, here’s how I styled them:

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Materials:

• 2 yards of fabric

• Scissors

• Pants to use as pattern

• Chalk/marking pencil 

• Elastic (3/4 in width or “waistband” elastic

• Pins 

• Sewing machine 

• Safety pin 

• Needle & matching thread 

Step 1: Fold fabric in half right sides together (aka have the bland side of the fabric facing out). Then fold fabric again, “hot dog” style. 

Step 2: Using a pair of pants, trace the outline for your culottes. Here I used a pair of culottes I already own, adjusting the size so it’s a couple inches bigger than the pants I’m using to trace. Cut after tracing.

Step 3: After cutting, you should have two big pieces that look like this (weird, I know lol but trust me it gets better). Line up each piece right sides together and pin along the curve side. Sew after pinning.

Step 4: After sewing, line up the seams (the stitches that were just sewn) and it should end up looking like this. So in hindsight, line up the crotch and the pant legs should look obvious. Pin the inside edges of the pant legs and sew them together. By now it should start looking like a pair of pants! Yay! You made it this far.  

Step 5: Fold over the top edge over 1 inch, then fold again another 1 inch (this will be the waistband). Iron it flat, pin along edge of waistband, and sew (making sure stitches are close to edge of waistband). 

Step 6: Take your elastic and measure around your waist to see how you want pants to fit then cut to desired length. Take a safety pin onto one of the edges of the elastic and feed it through the tunnel you created for your waistband. Once you’ve fed it all the way through, sew ends of elastic together with a zig-zag stitch. Tuck that into the waistband and sew the gap closed.  

And voila! Your new pants are complete 😁👖

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and that you learned something new! 

Xoxo, Ashley