And just like that, the weather’s warm.

I’m not really a shorts person. I will wear them but I prefer a pair of flowy, wide-leg linen pants when it’s not yet stinking hot outside. When I saw the Summer Caye pants pattern a short while ago, I thought “I need these.” Rather than buying more pants from Old Navy, why not blow through my (growing extensive) fabric stash instead?

Best laid plans…

Oh by the way, this post contains affiliate links — if you happen to make a purchase I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you.

When I got the pattern, I looked it over and decided I wanted the really big palazzo width pants. That, of course, required a bit more fabric than I had in any one woven fabric.

Side note: You can also do a capri or short with this pattern; I haven’t tried either just yet.

Long story short, I ended up buying the appropriate amount of fabric. I’ve been unmotivated to sew for the past little while, but seeing a pile of fabric stacking up was not good on my mind and I decided to start plowing through, beginning with the Summer Caye pants.

I’m SO glad I sewed them up.

I did the full-length pant in palazzo width with front and back pockets — the back ones had me a little worried at first because symmetry, but it worked out!

I lengthened the front and the back leg pattern pieces by 2.5 inches as the pattern is drafted for someone with a height of 5’5″. I added a 0.5″ for every additional inch of my height. (I’m 5’10”-ish.) Lengthening patterns is one of the few annoying things about using a projector and being too lazy to learn how to use Inkscape, but it is manageable. I’ll do a tutorial on how I do this soon.

I love how these turned out.

A few notes:

First thing, that I’m not sure happens to anyone else sewing this pattern, probably just me:

That thing happened where despite cutting things according to the pattern, there were about 6 extra inches of fabric on either the back or the front leg pieces! (I don’t remember which was the longer side.)

I was able to reduce this to about 2-3 inches by easing the looser side along the normal side, but I still had excess to cut off at the end, and in both cases, they were not rectangles of extra length. Kind of like… irregular quadrilaterals? Haha.

I added the same amount of length to the back and front pieces of the pant legs so I’m not sure what happened. The pattern DOES say to pin at the ankles and the waist then ease the rest of the fabric together along the length. I just don’t think it’s possible to ease 6 extra inches without adding pleating or something. Not for me, anyway.

Anyway, they look great so whatever I did worked out, thankfully.

Second thing:

I use Frixion pens [affiliate link] which are great because the marks steam/iron off the fabric never to be seen again, but also, I use Frixion pens and because of this, when I iron on interfacing, the marks — you guessed it — iron off the fabric never to be seen again. And then I need to re-draw them onto the pattern pieces, which for me requires turning on the projector, changing input source and casting from my laptop again. I realize this is the whiniest first-world problem one could have, it’s just a bit inconvenient and I needed somewhere to vent about it, lol. SORRY.

I will say that, sometimes, this is easily avoided by taking care to only iron the interfacing *around* the Frixion pen markings and not directly overtop if you can avoid it. When buttonholing however I have never found a good solution. I don’t do chalk. If anyone else has solutions for me, please leave them in the comments, up to and including “Ehhhh, quitcherbitchin’.”

Third thing:

For these pants I got to use my Sweary Sewist labels from Kylie & The Machine which I got from Sitka Fabrics. By the way, Sitka is one of the best Canadian small fabric shops — check them out if you haven’t!

I need more of these pants. Which means buying more fabric. Maybe I will do a patchwork version for my next pair. I’m really hoping to whittle down my stash this year instead of buying anything else. I will say that this buy was totally justified because they are the absolute perfect weight for summer palazzo pants.

[Ed. Note: After writing this, I found the exact yardage I will need for these in one fabric from my stash, so at least one more pair will look cohesive. Oooh, I’m excited.]

And that’s that! As always, you can share this post far and wide on Pinterest or wherever works best for you. You can also follow me on Instagram for the latest!

You can find the Summer Caye pattern from Love Notions’ site here.

I’d love to chat with you about these pants and this PDF sewing pattern. Please leave your thoughts in the comments section below!

That’s all from me for today. Happy sewing!

-Nikki