Today I’ve got not one, but three, pairs of Avery leggings by Helen’s Closet to share with you guys.

And there’s also a Fibre Mood Erin Sweatshirt thrown in for good measure.

Granted, all of my Avery leggings are pretty much identical, so I know I’m not offering you a lot of variety here, but at least you know I liked the pattern!

I have a bit of a confession to make here.

I thought I hated leggings.

I didn’t own a pair. At all. Ever

My workout pants were all that more straight, slightly ‘boot cut’, kind of shape which, ummm, hardly anyone makes anymore because of the ongoing seemingly universal leggings obsession.

For about the last 10 years, every time I looked at workout gear I bemoaned the horrible takeover of leggings and the complete unavailability of any other options.

Then, a couple of months ago, I started going back to group exercise classes for the first time since my son was born – so we’re talking nearly 5 years here.

Which lead to the realisation that my previous workout clothes didn’t really fit and would not be fit-for-purpose even if I could squeeze into them like a sausage.

This led me to try to buy some new workout clothes which lead me to a couple of realisations.

First, it is seriously considerably difficult to buy workout pants that I can jog in and do heavy cardio and weights which are not leggings.

Next on the awakenings, was the fact that any form of workout pant is ridiculously expensive (seriously 80-100 euros for workout pants – frickin’ insane!!!!).

And, finally, and perhaps most significantly, after necessity forced me to try on some leggings as nothing else was available, I realised that they’re not necessarily as terrible as I thought they were!

Blackbird Fabrics Strikes Again

At about the same time as I was recovering from the severe sticker shock at the price of RTW workout gear, Blackbird Fabrics dropped a bunch of heathered activewear, which were described as having the ideal stretch properties for the Avery leggings (the pattern requires 70% stretch).

Even importing the fabric from Canada to Europe, which included huge postal costs and customs/imports duties, it came out considerably cheaper than RTW would have.

It always makes me excited to discover these little pockets of sewing where I can actually make my own for cheaper than RTW. Out of a total of 3.5 metres of the activewear fabric from Blackbird Fabrics, I managed to squeeze out 3 pairs of Avery leggings, one pair of Avery bicycle shorts and I have one sports bra cut out (just waiting for elastic to arrive before sewing it).

So that would have cost me close to 350 euros buying high-end RTW brands!

This fabric is really soft and snuggly, yet supportive, and I can’t speak highly enough of it for it’s intended purpose. So far I’ve worn it jogging, to hot yoga and for lounging!

Yeah, there’s been plenty of lounging!

The only thing that I was a bit disappointed in is the colour selection. I purchased a dark grey, a grey and a colour marked as ‘navy’, but I find that all three colours look pretty darn similar, especially the ‘navy’ and lighter ‘grey’. Given the similarities in colour, I regret not having splashed out and purchased one of the more, well, colourful colours they had on offer!

I’m feeling maybe a tad too neutral in all of these.

Hey, speaking of non-neutral, I fantastise about making a future pair of Avery leggings in this amazing curvy yoga print I saw on Spoonflower: how many shades of awesome is THIS!

My Avery Leggings

My leggings are all view B, which is the high-waisted version with extra long legs. Due to a lack of fabric, my bike shorts are the regular waist (i.e. view A waistband).

My Avery leggings are an XL, although the size chart, based on my waist and hip measurements, put me in an L.

I did some searching of the blog-osphere before sewing my Avery leggings and saw that almost everyone said that they had sized up or wished they had done so.

I am pretty confident that there is no way I would have been able to fit into the L as the XL feels pretty darn perfect.

I think part of the challenge here is that, for me at least, it isn’t really my waist and hip measurements which determine whether or not a pair of leggings fit me well. And, indeed, the waist and hip are absolutely fine on my Avery leggings and I possible could have fit into one size smaller.

The area where leggings can feel tight or uncomfortable, on my body, is the question of how it fits me around the legs and size charts don’t seem to take this into account. Even if my waist and hips could have handled an L, my solid thighs and calves definitely could not have.

So I first made one pair with the hopeful “size up one and hope for the best” and then, after emerging happy, quickly sewed up 2 more pairs and a bike short pair.

Activewear sewing help!

After all, I now had some super-stretchy woolly nylon thread in my overlocker for the first time ever – I needed to take advantage of that!!

Before embarking on this project, I had to say that I was a bit scared of sewing activewear, so I purchased Johanna Lundtrom’s Sewing Activewear book for a bit of extra hand holding as I embarked on this unknown sewing area.

I found it pretty useful, especially for rather basic tips that weren’t obvious to me as an activewear sewing beginner. For example, I’d previously heard of woolly nylon thread but hand’t thought of it as really essential until I read the book.

The book also made me realise that I could just use three cones of my 4-thread overlocker in order to have a less bulky seam for activewear seams.

These tips alone, in my experience, justified the book’s price, as it made my sewing much easier. With the woolly nylon thread the level of softness and stretchiness in the seams of my Avery leggings is way beyond my expectations.

The book also had some suggestions for how to sew a flat seam using only your overlocker, although it acknowledged it was a bit tricky. I made a very half-arsed attempt at doing this and wasn’t able to get it right. But I promise my attempt was pretty pathetic, so I’m sure this reflects me, not the book.

I also added in some little phone/key pockets on the inside of my Avery leggings waistbands, using techniques from the book.

Overall, when I try to write it down it seems like what I took from the book was pretty obvious, but, nonetheless, I found that it really gave me a boost of confidence and there are definitely projects and techniques in the book that I’ll return to in the future.

Sewing my Avery leggings

I did feel a little bit as though sewing these Avery leggings was a leap of faith.

The entire way through, I kept looking at them thinking, these are too small. There’s no way these legs are extra long. I don’t understand how this elastic thing is going to work.

But then, when the waist band was attached, it was as though there was this magic moment where the leggings suddenly stretched out and grew into the right shape and everything ended up being JUST FINE.

Patterns with serious negative ease often cause me “this isn’t gonna work….” anxiety!

After reading some other blog posts, I was a bit unsure about how the method for elastic insertion was going to work but, well, it just did!

Although I did go out and buy the right width elastic to help the process along after many of you on instagram urged me not to go with my original idea of just cutting a wider elastic in half!!!!!

After making my first pair, with elastic, I wasn’t entirely convinced that the elastic was necessary. I made my next two pairs without, although I kept the elastic in the bike shorts because I will only be wearing those for very active pursuits.

So far, I don’t see a major performance difference in the ones with the elastic or without. And, without elastic is vastly more comfortable for lounging purposes (yes, my leggings disdain meant I had no idea how great leggings are for lounging until now…)

So, as long as your fabric is stretchy enough and has good recovery, my own experience is that skipping the elastic is definitely an option. If you do this, then sewing the waistband and waistband facing with the recommended 1/8th offset would not seem to be necessary.

The other main thing I would note about sewing the Avery leggings is: Damn is it a fast sew!

After sewing up one test pair, I was then able to cut and sew two more full length pairs plus one pair of biclycle shorts in a single evening after work. That’s even faster than next-day delivery!!

Fibre Mood Erin Sweatshirt

With my ‘navy’ Avery leggings here, I’m also wearing a modified Fibre Mood Erin sweater. As I’m probably not going to do as a separate blog post, I thought I would add it in here.

Since, for my level of activity, activewear and loungewear are often complimentary!

This Fibre Mood Erin Sweatshirt is a size large. I was first attracted to the elastic-wrist sleeve which makes more of a balloon sleeve but, after putting in the elastic, I realised the proportion of the sleeve looked a bit off on me. I preferred it as a bell sleeve, so I pulled the elastic out.

I think that on my body, I needed to size up to ensure that the entirety of the arm was oversized enough to really make the cinching at the wrist effective.

You will notice that I have also added in a turtleneck. As I love turtlenecks. My turtleneck piece is 14cm wide, with a length of 90% the length of my neckline and I really like it.

The reason, however, that this sweater is sadly relegated to loungewear only status is that this fabric was awful to work with.

It’s such a deceptive fabric. It is so soft and cuddly and looks like the perfect sweater knit. It looked like a gentle soft blue teddy bear. I fell instantly in love with it when I saw it in person at Ray Stitch (I can’t find it online to share).

Turns out to be an icy hell demon of a fabric!

It wanted to stretch out like absolute crazy when sewing, which is totally evident from the almost ruffle-like hem I ended up with. Surely non-sewists will just think it’s a design feature?

Furthermore, after wearing it only around the house for a couple of hours, there was so much unsightly pilling under the arms and at the sides as to render it pretty much unwearable.

Cue major disappointment!

So, my high hopes for the Erin Sweater haven’t quite panned out thanks to fabric woes.

But, I’ve still get 3.5 amazing pairs of Avery leggings and I am officially ready to hibernate in them until Spring rolls back around…

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.