How to Make Leggings

A while back I was smitten by some beautiful fabrics at the fabric store here in Mexico.  Every trip I find myself drawn to this one display.  All the fabrics are so vibrant and beautiful.  I love running my hand through them.  I wanted to buy them, all of them, but I wasn't sure what to do with them.  Originally my Mexican fabric shop was only carrying a traditional Mexican fabric called Cambaya.  The original idea for the shop was to only carry exclusively Mexican fabrics.  After some investigation I found that this other fabric I love so much is also made in Mexico.  It occurred to me that my fabric shop should carry more than Cambaya.  I decided to buy some of the fabric I had adored so long.

The fabric is a polyester lycra from what I can tell.  It is light weight and very soft.  I need to return to the fabric store to get better information about this fabric, but it's hard with everything being in Spanish.  Also many of the cards on the fabric are not completed with all the information.  I find the fabric store employees to be also very unhelpful and uninformative.

I imagined this fabric would be awesome for leggings, however with my anemia and doll work I only got around to trying my hand at a pair yesterday.  I used this video as a guide.  I was so so pleased with how they came out.  The first pair was too short at the waist but I added 5 inches and the second pair came out perfect size-wise.  I did decide though, that if I am actually going to make some leggings for sale I would like to improve on this pattern a bit first.  The first thing I would like to do is buy a serger/overlock sewing machine.  I mean these look great for me but to really give them a professional finish they need to be serged.  I also think these pants might need to be lined, especially in the crotch.  I'm going to wear my pair around for a while and see how they hold up.  Overall I am really excited about them.

The funniest part about this project was that the woman in the instructional video used a solid white material.  Leave it to me to use a material with so many lines that needed to be matched up perfectly.  I'm getting much better at pinning!  (This is a little inside joke.  I took a quilting class once and the older woman instructor was appalled by my refusal to pin anything.  She tried to tell me over and over it was necessary but still I refused.  She became exasperated when all my lines came out perfect with no pinning.  She stopped hassling me after that!)  Ha ha!

Next step will to get these sewn up professionally with a serger and then get them on some models!

Or make your own!  Find this fabric for sale in my Mexican Fabric and Fashion shop here.