We recently (the week before Christmas) got a puppy and with his addition, we have been getting out more for walks with short running periods the past few weeks. He is almost five months old now and the walks have been much needed to tire him out in the evenings. With my health issues, I usually can’t do much of either, but I have been utilizing my recumbent bike and working on my leg and heart strength, and as a result I’ve been able to keep up with him. As a little, young puppy, he can only go for short periods while he is growing, which is perfect for my body as well.
When we started taking him out, I realized that I was grabbing the same athletic top, leggings, and bra repeatedly. AND of those three, only one was made by me. Insert shocked face. In my mostly me made wardrobe, I have neglected true athletic tops and bras. To be honest, the whole bra topic makes me nervous, but at the beginning of this year, I decided to cross that off my list and so here we are.
Baby steps y’all. I decided to tackle a matching pair of capris first.
The fabric I decided to use for this set, was a surprise that arrived at my house a few weeks back. It is this gorgeous teal, honeycomb texture fabric from Fabmere Fabrics. I still have no idea who my fabric godmother is, but they sent me one yard of the teal honeycomb and one yard of the olive green honeycomb. With only having a yard I mulled over how to best utilize it. After much debate, I decided to go with the Stride athletic tights from Greenstyle Creations. It has a really great insert piece that allows for just this type of fabric usage. Since I’m too tall to get full length leggings from a yard, and with our warming weather, going for the capri length was perfect.
I decided to try out the optional cross cuff and waistband pocket on this version as well. I have made several pairs of the stride tights in the past, and love the fit. That pair of leggings I was repeatedly grabbing for our puppy walks? Strides.
I really wanted the teal honeycomb to pop so I used some black athletic from my stash for the rest of the leggings.
If you follow me on instagram, you probably saw a few of my recent posts sharing my sewing frustration with sewing these cross cuffs. The cuffs themselves were not difficult, but I messed up and did a step out of order on the cuff straps. On take two, my coverstitch went back to being difficult. So for take three, I went off course and instead of doing the cuff straps as the pattern instructed, I just cut my strips (3/8″ wide) out of the black fabric and omitted the clear elastic or the folding and topstitching.
I was having an off sewing day, so the cuff directions seemed harder for me to follow than I expected. I did use my trusty wash away wonder tape on them, which was a huge help. You can see it all on this time lapse video I made, including the changes I made to the straps.
Now to make the matching bra and cross that off my list. The bra has been made and you can read all about it here, later today.
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Sew Gr8ful 