Scarlett's "Fancy Pants"

I've been eyeballing the Lucia Bella Pantaloon pattern from Snazzie Drawers for what seems like forever.  I've had it on my Pinterest and finally decided to get out of my sewing rut.  (More on that later.)  Sat down today and got crackin'.

Scarlett's "Fancy Pants"-

And the back-

     I added the pockets because, well honestly, I think I just wanted to put more bows somewhere.  Starting to make stuff for her fall wardrobe.  No more shorts or skirts, falls a-comin'.

    So I view this as a success after my latest sewing rut.  It started off with a faux chenille blanket that I was making for the new baby of one of my husband's soldiers.  I worked forever on this thing.  Ordered a chenille cutter, ran out to get bias for the binding about half and hour before Joann's closed, you-name-it.  It seemed doomed from the start.  I didn't pay close enough attention and ended up sewing the rows 1/4" apart instead of 1/2", making it twice as difficult. 

    Anyway, so I finally get this thing finished, wash it, dry it... it's not fluffy enough, so I wash it again.  I'm used to washing my kids' stuff on "sanitize" and accidentally set it to that setting.  Well, go figure, if you wash red on super hot, it's going to bleed.  And bleed it did.  All of the white parts of the robots turned a muddy red... the yellow bias binding was ruined.  It was BAD.

    I tried washing in OxyClean, no luck.  Soaked it in Clorox 2 Colorsafe bleach, no luck.  Soaked in OxyClean overnight, nope.  Finally, I put in Rit color brightener (powder you can find in the laundry section), there was an improvement, but still nothing fabulous.  I brought out the big guns.  Rit color remover.  I figured that it didn't matter at this point and I was more curious than anything.  Put it in and... POOF!  It was ALMOST back to normal.  Now, it had been washed and abused so much that it just looked "used".  So I gave it to Kai, and he loves it.

After the final washing.

   After the faux chenille blanket debaucle, I decided to make a coat that I've been planning for awhile.  It was Simplicity Pattern 3654. 

I wanted to do the outside in a nice, light pink corduroy, lined with fusible fleece, and a a paper-doll print fabric for the visible inner liner.  I cut everything out and started to sew, only to have it look completely funky.  Then I realized that there was a large portion of the front section of the coat missing.  I tried drafting another piece for the front part of the coat, cut it out with new sleeve fronts and sewed it.  Still wasn't right.

     After I did that though, I found the missing portion of the original front piece (it was unlabeled and I figured it was mistakenly put in there from another pattern as I had bought it used).  I recut the front portion of the coat and the sleeves (I hate ripping out seams, and I had enough that I just figured I'd rather cut more) for the THIRD time, and sewed it together again.  It STILL wasn't lining up.  I couldn't figure it out, until I looked closely at the sleeve part and saw that it was missing a good 2" of the pattern off the top.  At this point, I had wasted 3 yards of fabric, hours of my time, and I was stressed to the max.

     I had to sew something, ANYTHING, that would work.  So that's what motivated me to tackle a project I've been thinking of for awhile...

the "fancy pants".  :)