Stay-At-Home Loungewear

From my rooftop I can see into the top apartment on a neighboring building. I've never noticed anyone in there before, but the past few times I've been up here to take photos I've noticed the couple is home. I guess everyone is home now. Today the man was doing some sort of virtual exercise routine. They also have a very nice looking cat with a window seat. I wonder if they've noticed me?

Like the rest of them, I've been staying home. I guess it's not too different from my normal routine of working from home. Regardless, I've definitely been needing more loungewear in my life and finally took a break from fancy projects to sew some up.




Pattern: Schnitten Patterns Sue Sweatshirt and Greenstyle Creations Stride Athletic Tights
Fabric: assorted knits
Cost: remnants for the top and $20 for the tights

Let's start with the top. I actually had this planned for a while, but for those sewing from your stash right now this pattern and ones like it are a great way to use up remnants. The main fabric here is an Art Gallery knit from my partnership with Modes4U. I somehow got it in my head that it would be really fun to play with the print and color blocking and mocked up quite a few versions in Photoshop until I found something I liked. I bought the burnt orange to go with it, though I realized later I could have used a remnant from my jumpsuit, and the black pieces are remnants from two different knits.


The pattern is the Sue Sweatshirt from Schnittchen Patterns. A bit of research showed that it was inspired by Helmut Lang's Alexandre Plokhov collection for Uniqlo (Sewing Workshop also has the Bristol pattern that is inspired by this collection). 

This was my first time working with Schnittchen and, well I wasn't terribly impressed. For one, there appear to be two different versions of the pattern floating around, one sold on their website and one sold for a bit more on The Foldline website. This would be all fine except the line drawings are different. See the difference? The one from their website (left) has a hemband that wraps all the way around, while the one from Foldline does not. The model in both cases, however, showed the one on the right. 

I wondered if maybe the line drawing was wrong but when I bought my pattern the pieces were for the one on the left. A quick web search shows that people indeed have sewn up two different versions. The problem was, I had my heard set on the one on the right. It's not a huge difference but it changes the construction order and some of the pattern pieces. So, do know that and choose accordingly before you buy. 

The other thing I disliked about the Schnittchen pattern were the instructions. They're a bit hard to follow. But there are some clever construction techniques in there. I think they were in there - otherwise I made them up and I'm clever! They were translated from German but the line drawings (showing markings like center front, etc.) weren't always translated so that was also annoying.

I do like the final fit, however. I didn't want this to be too boxy and it ended up just fine. This is probably also due to my fabric choice, which is more drapey than sweatshirt fabric. In terms of alterations, I only made a few small changes aside from re-creating the hem-band of the other version. First, I re-drew the neckline to make it more of a crew-neck shape. I also shortened the arms by about three inches as they were looong. Finally, I cut the back and side fronts as two separate pieces so I could play with the directionality of the stripes in the front without messing with the grainline on the back. I like the final result. Isn't that hem band cool?



The top is probably more interesting but I am arguably much more excited about these tights. I struggled with the Jalie leggings over several versions before deciding that I needed to try a new pattern. In addition to a good fit, I was looking for something that had pockets on the legs and that sat high at the natural waist. After looking through several patterns I settled on the Stride Athletic Tights from the new-to-me Greenstyle Creations company.

Sometimes I can be a little reticent to try out indie pattern companies that I'm not familiar with. Indeed, the pattern had a few of the common flaws I see from others: the instructions were overly detailed in some places but lacking in others, there weren't enough notches to help with construction, and it was hard to tell which pattern pieces to cut for which view.



However, overall I'm very happy with this pattern. First off, the fit is great. This is my second pair. The first did turn out a little snug (I imagine the fit will really vary based on your fabric), but the shape was great on me and was exactly what I was looking for. The designer has a wide size range and also uses models throughout the size range, which is really great. It seems people tend to get a good fit.

I am also really pleased with the details. The designer appears to be very athletic based on her Instagram and I feel like these could work well for me on my runs or, made in a fabric like this one, for lounging around the house. This is great as my running tights are wearing out and I'd been looking for a replacement pattern. I don't usually run with my cell phone but I love the pockets for using my phone when walking the dog and also stashing my keys. There's also an option for a waistband pocket but I skipped that.



The fabric is the yoga stretch knit from Stonemountain. It is actually less like an athletic material and more like a medium-weight t-shirt knit (I actually made the hubs a t-shirt out of this over a year ago), but I actually quite like it for tights. The stretch percentage is slightly lower so I added an inch of extra ease to my tights.

The only other alteration I made to the pattern was to convert the side panel into a straight vertical panel rather than one that extends as a yoke toward the back. Looking at the pattern pieces I could see that the yoke didn't add any extra shaping, and I prefer fewer seams in tights if possible.

In all I expect to get some good wear out of these during quarantine and beyond. In fact, I'm wearing them now! And by the way, yes, this is me.


1 comment:

  1. Cute sweater! I've been looking for colour blocking inspiration to sew some of my sweater remnants into a single garment.

    ReplyDelete

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