Viking Rus Pants Finished!

I love it when I finish something. It makes me want to go and finish other somethings! And this week I finished two somethings - Dan's viking pants, and the inkle woven criss cross leg wrap thingy that I mentioned back here.

But before I get to that, when I left you here I had just finished inserting the crotch gusset using french seams and was sewing up the lower leg pieces. After that, I used the machine (on the widest stitch setting) to sew two straight rows of stitching 1/2 cm apart along the bottom of each upper leg section without reversing at each end. Then I held the bobbin threads (these were on the bottom when the fabric was on the machine) firmly in one hand, and used my other hand to squash the fabric up in the other direction. You have to do it a little bit at a time but you can gather up very large amounts of fabric into very gathered small lengths. Once it was gathered up to roughly the right size, I took the lower leg piece and slipped it over my gathered loop like so, with right sides together.

My god I can't draw

Here I adjusted the gathering threads for the last time to make sure the two pieces fit nicely together, then tied them together to secure. Pin the upper and lower leg sections together and sew. A free arm sewing machine makes this really easy, but it can be done on a regular machine too as long as you are always stitching the 'bottom' of the tube, with the 'top' above and to the left of the presser foot. You just have to keep adjusting your fabric.

This next step is totally optional, but it definitely makes the pants more comfortable around that gathered leg seam (and also stops fraying since I couldn't use a french seam here).

Top = Daniel's pants with biased seam.
Bottom = dads pants with raw edge

The bottom pants in this picture are my dads, and you can see how tight the gathers are. Its about 90 inches worth of fabric gathered up to 18 inches. When i put them on myself I was like "Ow! This is really scratchy". Dan's (top) were not so bad as he had less fullness and also a softer fabric, but still not super comfortable. So I bought some cream coloured bias binding and attached it over the raw edge. The first edge was pinned and sewn to the line of stitching that connects the two pieces of the leg (not the gathering threads). Then I stretched the lower leg fabric out and pinned the bias so that it made a slight bubble shape. Why do you ask? Because I have used this technique before and the bias has been pulled taught instead of the fabric and it looks good on the inside but doe this ugly wrinkle thing on the outside.

Using bias to enclose a seam. (why didn't I take a photo of this?!?!?!)

After that I hemmed the lower legs, and turned down the waistband and put a cheap cotton drawstring through (this will be replaced by an inkle woven one soon) and voila! Viking rus pants complete!

Pants complete!

And then I sat down for an hour after the kids were in bed and finished the other inkle woven leg wrap.

Pants with leg wraps

Close up of leg wraps

I do wish the leg wraps were longer. I think a third cross would look better, but they are the maximum length my inkle loom can handle. Just waiting on a friend to make me a bigger one :)

Hubby still thinks they are pretty spiffing. And he is rather excited to wear them this weekend. We are going up to an event in the Shire of Dismal Fogs (read - Lithgow, Blue Mountains) so I will make sure to take some more photos. Dad's pants should be finished by then too! I've also volunteered myself to teach a beginners tablet weaving class at the event so stay tuned for details on how that goes.