I don’t know about you, but during hot sticky weather, the last thing I want to do is pull on a pair of jeans.  Even though it is October, we have had a couple hot days still.  Obviously I have lots of skirt and dress options, but sometimes I haven’t shaved my legs in awhile, or I am going someplace that over air-conditions and I want to wear pants.  These loose, linen pants are now my go-to summer pants.  I have a pair that is a teal color (made pre-blog), but I wanted a dark blue to more closely replace my jeans.

The top is also made by me, a long time ago.

In the past couple years, I have discovered the amazing fiber that is linen.  Our ancestors were totally on board with linen– they used it for everything!  Part of this is that for them, linen was less expensive than cotton, while for us it is the reverse.  But linen truly is the best fiber for hot weather.  Like all natural fibers it breathes, but it also has this amazing ability to not get clingy even when you sweat.  Sometimes I feel like long pants in linen are actually cooler than something with less coverage because they absorb some of the sunlight.

These pictures were taken at this wildflower field a couple of blocks from out house.

Anyway, back to these specific pants.  They are actually self-drafted.  I am working my way up to making jeans, and my number one desire is that they have exactly the fit I want.  I still haven’t decided whether I will achieve that best with a self-draft, but I decided it was worth exploring.  Being new to drafting, I started with a more forgiving style than jeans.  (Also I really wanted a pair of loose, linen pants for summer.)  I figured that even though the legs are different, the crotch curve should be the same.  After the loose pants, I adapted the draft to make a pair of skinny pants.  The fit of those is closer to jeans, so I am in a good position to do that if I want to.

My first pair of linen pants were a little wide in the hip, so I shaved a bit off that seam, but that was my only change.  The construction to these is very basic, just serged on the inside.  The waistband facing is stitched in the ditch.  The hem is finished with my machine blind hem stitch.  If you have never experimented with your machine’s blind hem, give it a try.  It is one of my most used stitches (aside from a straight stitch, obviously).  There is a side seam zipper, which I like to put in the right side, even though women’s zippers are “supposed” to be on the left.  Yay for custom clothes exactly how I like them!