First day of work culottes.

So I have a new job. I am managing a campus in the central city for our University. Without going into a long winded explanation of the minutiae of the job, the main responsibilities are outreach, promotion, event management, operational management, stakeholder engagement and generally trying to keep academic staff, general staff, upper management, students and the wider public engaged and happy with with a new campus – which just happens to be in a heritage building that was the site of the University when it first started in the late 1800s.

I’m at day two, and and the avalanche of new information has me pretty wiped, I’m not going to lie. But it’s a great job for me and I have been ready for a change in job for some time now.

To commemorate my first day, I made some new pants.

I bought this pattern for $1 from my sister’s church’s op-shop a few years ago. The material I – some sort of bouncy poly something – I purchased for $2 from my local favourite op-shop, ReStore. The buttons were in my stash, and the zip came from my sister’s stash. So I bought two reels of thread, and some d-rings, and I made these cute little culottes.

The pattern was a 12 (vintage) so it was too small through the waist, which was easy to remedy by letting out some of the pleating in the pattern and grading the side seams out to 1cm instead of 1.5cm above the hip. I didn’t make any other adjustments apart from attaching the waistband lower by 0.5cm on the right hand side, to accommodate my higher right hip. Next time I would shorten the front crotch a little, but the back crotch was fine, which is not usual for me.

I love the details in these pants. You can’t really tell from the photos but the waistband wraps around itself, with one side feeding through a button hole opening and the side seam and both ends of the waistband attaching to the D rings. I also like the side pockets, the wee flaps over the tops of the pockets. Top-stitching in white helps emphasise these cool wee touches and I am pleased with the end result.

Pictured here with my – slightly crushed – white Lottie blouse. Photos taken at the end of an 11 hour day, so we none of us were at our freshest.