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Harriet’s Marigold Trousers

Personally, I don’t mind a cocophony-but-for-the-eyes approach to clashing prints, but my top sewing goal to come out of Me Made May was to sew up more solid colour fabrics.

It has been four months. I have not made a single solid colour garment. Quite frankly, I had completely forgotten about that plan – until the November Sew Hayley Jane box came to the rescue with a gorgeous royal blue cotton jersey.

As per what seems to have become a monthly ritual for me, I ate my SHJ snack while I decided what to use this month’s fabric for. It’s most definitely heading into winter here in the UK, and the fabric was jersey after all, so something comfy had to be on the cards. Tilly Walnes, whom some of us may herald as a national hero, is the queen of secret pyjamas – so I knew I’d end up reaching for one of her patterns.

The Marigold trousers and jumpsuit pattern is a personal favourite of mine, and with an elasticated waistband, has comfort written all over it. The pattern was designed with woven fabrics in mind, but I remembered seeing on the list of fabric suggestions that the trousers could be made in a lightweight, low stretch jersey – so I decided to go for it! I’ve made quite a few pairs of Marigold trousers (shall I say trousers one more time?) before, but all have been in woven fabrics, so I was pretty excited to add a jersey pair to my collection. The pattern is already comfy enough, but in jersey? I knew that was going to end up being a whole new level of snug.

I wanted to be extra sure that there would be as little distortion in the trousers as possible, so I really took my time when I was arranging the pattern pieces on the fabric. There was a little bit of curling along the selvedge edges of the jersey (which is completely normal), so I ironed and steamed out as much of the curling as I could before the fabric made its way to the cutting table. Once I’d laid my pattern pieces onto the jersey, I measured from the grainline drawn on the pattern to the edge of the fabric, to make sure that the pieces were absolutely on-grain.

Tilly’s instructions, as ever, were nice and easy to follow. The markings on the pattern pieces were all annotated so that you’re not questioning anything at any point at all, and the written instructions are always very clear and concise – definitely not as waffley as I am! The photos as well were just so very helpful. But I’m sounding like a broken record praising Tilly’s instructions; in every single review of her patterns I say practically the same thing about how outstanding they are, but I must say that this was particularly rad! If you ever need to make some secret pyjama trousers, or a snazzy little jumpsuit, this is the pattern to use. Tilly’s blog also has a post on 10 Design Hacks for the Marigold Jumpsuit which is something I’m definitely going to refer to in the future, and will mean that I’ll be reinventing Marigold for years to come!