Love Notions Allegro Bottoms Hack

It’s my turn to take over Feature Friday on the Love Notions Blog and this week’s pattern is the Allegro Bottoms. It’s a nice simple woven pattern that is perfect for everyday wear. The pattern features several pants and skirt views and can be made in a variety of light to medium weight woven fabrics. All views feature a pull-on style with front slash pockets, back patch pockets, a faux fly and elastic waistband with drawstring. The pants and shorts have a semi-relaxed fit through the hips and thighs, tapering down to the ankle. The shorts can be cuffed and the pants can be made into joggers. Two skirt options are included- knee length and ankle length. The ankle length skirt features two slits up to the knee. It’s a total of 7 bottom views!

You know me… I could just make something uncomplicated.. but of course an idea hit me and I just had to run with it. I changed my project two days before my deadline! And guess what? Your girl has no regrets! Phew! So I decided to hack the ankle length skirt into a full length flowy maxi skirt with non-functional buttons, rouleau loops and a front slit. It sounds like a lot.. but this hack is super simple! It looks a lot more difficult than it was and it completely switches up the look of the pattern.

Even better, I demonstrated a ton of sewing machine feet on this project. It’s one of the reasons I hacked it in the first place. Sewing machine feet are amazing.. I love being able to switch out the basic foot for super cool ones that do special things and make your garment look so much more professional. There’s literally a foot for everything and my collection is growing nicely, so over on the Love Notions Blog, you can see all the different feet I used for this project in action. I used the edge stitch foot, buttonhole foot, overcast foot, blind hem foot, walking foot, knit foot, piping foot, and j foot (the j foot came with my CS6000i). I got my 32 foot set from Amazon, and there are some I haven’t even tried yet. Such a fun set to play with!

One of the reasons why my skirt looks so different is my fabric choice. I wanted a flowy beachy maxi, so I opted for a very lightweight crepe. I’m not sure I’ve seen the Allegros made up in such a lightweight fabric yet. It really does give a totally different vibe that really screams Keira! The design of the fabric is some sort of tie dye effect with an absolutely stunning border of different prints. It’s sort of like a mixed print fabric… soooo gorgeous! It looks super intricate, almost like I stitched different prints together myself. And here’s the best part… I scored this fabric for $7 on sale at my local fabric store!

I know I’m going to get questions about my cute lil tank top. That lace edge is beautiful and the perfect compliment to this delicate skirt. This one is ready to wear, but I am 100% sure you can hack this easily using the Summer Basics Tank pattern. Honestly, if I had planned this look earlier, I would have totally done that! There’s always next time!

To go with the whole beach vibe, I used pearl buttons for my rouleau loops. Pearls do come from the sea after all! I think they really finish off the look nicely! I did 8 buttons and loops and they are non-functional. I didn’t want to risk having my skirt pop open right at my frontal region! I didn’t want traditional buttonholes either, I was really going for an aesthetic here people! You do see the mermaid vibe too right?

So now that you’ve seen my Allegro Skirt hack, made sure to go to the Love Notions Blog for all the how-to details and my Sewing School Lesson on sewing machine feet! And remember, the Allegro Bottoms pattern is on sale for $5 today only if you wanna grab a copy! Catch ya again soon!

Toodle-loo

Keira