As I moved from skirts to tops, in the process of learning how to sew, the next logical step seemed to me to be pants.  I started with boxer shorts to sleep in, with an elastic waist and then moved directly to wanting to sew a pair of stretch leather slim pants.  Needless to say this is a big stretch from simple elastic waisted pants. But why keep it simple when you can learn the hard way?! 😉 

As I have said before, my learning process hasn’t been gradual, moving from simple to more elaborate.  Instead, I get inspired by something I see, then add my touch, and of course use a material that I have ever used before.  I just jump right in 😉 One thing to keep in mind with this method, though, it that it takes much longer to complete a project, since it’s a lot of trial and error. This means lots of sewing & taking apart , recutting, sewing and resewing etc.  Sometimes it’s a little frustrating and sometimes you spend a lot of time online looking for solutions to your problems, and sometimes you just put them aside and start something new.

So my first pair of pants with a zipper were in stretch leather.  I bought 3 olive stretch leather lamb skins on a French website called Cuir en Stock that sells leather. The leather was 2nd category, which means it has some flaws, but it’s much less expensive.  And for a first pair, it was fine.  I used the Burda style Leather Leggings 08/2010 #123 Pattern. A simple slim Pants pattern with a side zip and no pockets. I lowered the waist on the pattern.

I also used this pattern to make a cotton piqué version.