Today I’ve got the Rae Pants from Named Clothing’s Breaking the Pattern for you.

Made in this lovely tencel pinstripe pique from Meter Meter’s MeetMILK sustainable collection.

It’s a bit of a Meter Meter bonus post because the top is a Kabuki tee also made out of meetMILK tencel (leftover from another project!) from them!

I have a pair of elastic-waisted navy jersey culottes that I bought at Uniqlo in Japan that are pretty much my go-to weekend wear. They are so comfortable, yet don’t look like tracksuit pants.

And I just spilled white paint all over them!

When I saw the Rae Pants in Breaking the Pattern my first thought was, they’ll be just like a non-jersey pair of my weekend pants. I’ll be able to have that same comfort level, just in something I can actually wear to work!

Splits-ville

I had fully intended to remove the split from my Rae Pants.

I have immense respect for the style and aesthetic of Named Clothing.

But a thigh-high split in wide-legged pants?

Really?

But, here’s the thing.

There is just something about how great the Rae Pants look in the photos in Breaking the Pattern that, at the last minute, all the practical thoughts about a sensible, wearable, work appropriate pair of Rae Pants just disappeared.

Instead, I decided ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ and decided to cut it out as designed.

Split and all.

And, well…

Sometimes it’s great to leave your comfort zone.

But sometimes, you just end up with a pair of pants that leave you paranoid that everyone is staring at you as you walk, trying to figure out precisely what kind of wardrobe malfunction is going on with those strange swishy pants.

OK, I exagerate slightly.

But, not quite as much as this split!

My Rae Pants

On the off chance you’re here seeking practical and useful information, these Rae Pants are a size 5.

My main word of warning (well, apart from beware the split) is that the pattern, as drafted, is very long. The Rae Pants are drafted for a woman of 172cm tall.

Which seems rather optimistic to me.

I’m 167cm tall, but I found that I had to cut off a whopping 24cm from the length of my Rae Pants to get them to do the ‘long culottes’ length you see here.

The only difficulty I encountered when sewing was following the instructions in Breaking the Pattern for the in-seam pocket construction. The instructions asked you to first sew entire side seam, leaving a gap for the pocket and then install the pocket into that gap by attaching it to the seam allowance.

I’d never tried to install an inseam pocket in this manner before. I had a bit of a ‘maybe I’ve been doing wrong all this time’ moment and decided to try to just follow the instructions and try it the Rae Pants way.

Between the pockets and the split, it seems I was highly susceptible to suggestion on the day I sewed these Rae pants!

So, no, I havn’t been wrong my whole life.

Sewing up the side seam first and then fiddling around with the little gap to install the pockets to the seam allowance is not a revelation.

It sucks.

It’s totally fiddly – especially when you have only a 1cm seam allowance to work with. And my pockets ended up looking so much messier than if I’d just done them the way I know (i.e. attach pocket bags to pant legs first, then sew side seam in one long line, going around the edge of the pocket).

Am I missing something here? Is there some kind of hidden advantage to the fiddling-around-in-the-gap pocket installation method? Does anyone actually sew their in-seam pockets like this?

Next time?

So, whilst I have a pair of Rae Pants that itsn’t totally unwearable and which I shall embrace on those days when I’m feeling slightly braver than usual, my dream for a pair of elastic waisted work-appropriate pants that I want to wear on a daily basis remains unfulfilled.

On this note, if you’re kind of hedging your bets about ‘to split or not to split’, while I was part way through sewing these Rae Pants, I thought to myself ‘if the split looks terrible, I’ll just sew it up’. In the end, I attempted to do this but the sewn-up split looked so terrible that I unpicked it and decided I would have to have the courage of my convictions and stick with the split.

Perhaps when I’ve stopped laughing at myself long enough (ummm, you decided to make work pants with a thigh-high split?), I’ll get around to trying the Rae Pants again.

But don’t worry, I’ve already removed the split from my pattern pieces.

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.