These are a pair of fancy pants that I've upcycled out of three old garments and a piece of vintage embroidery; what do you think??

I adore stripes of all kinds, and I especially love mixing up multiple types of stripes.... and hand-embroidered treasures like this vintage table runner are high up on my list of fabrics that I drool over, whenever I am blessed enough to find them for €1 or under, at the mercato!

And so, putting contrasting fave fabrics like this together in a new garment is rather a delicious activity!

I began this project by cutting open the sideseams of the black and white jeans, which are actually quite elastic a fabric. The trews were widened dramatically, by the adding of these big blocks of different fabrics - the paler of which has a particular pleat in it, to allow a nice flare in the lower legs.

The contrasting but also stripey additional garments were two other jeans - sometimes I forget what garments the other pieces came from, but I found the left-overs for these... Both additional pairs I cut different aspects out of; the dark blue pinstripe for the waist, and the pale blue for the legs.

There was a lot of pinning involved, creating a new structure, and making sure that things sit well as a whole...

And the sewing was half-machine, half-by-hand: the machine got stuck when I introduced the vintage cotton piece with the embroidery, where it was folded over more than once. I broke two needles - oopah!

It was a joy working the vintage embroidery into the bottom of the trews! They clash & harmonise in equal measure, and for me they bring more meaning and beauty into fabrics that previously were rather conservative.

finishing touches this morning, to the many seams that the machine couldn't deal with!

And then dearest Hive account@vincentnijman was generous to come out with me this morning, in the almost-zero temperature, to help photoshoot the final kecks!