Sweatpants: a DIY

Once it became clear, in late summer, that I was going to be confined mostly to home for the foreseeable future, I invested heavily in comfy pants. Tunics and leggings had their moment last spring, but I wanted, once in a while, to be able to wear a shirt of a normal length while lounging around the house. So a shopping spree ensued. I ended up with 5 secondhand pairs of sweat/lounge pants, which, being secondhand, were mostly of a somewhat dated straight-leg cut. Something had to be done.

It seems like it was only yesterday that I converted my first pair of straight-leg sweatpants into what was, at that time, a trendy pair of joggers.

These days, it only takes a quick perusal of Tik Tok or Instagram to show that joggers are no longer trendy. If you're going to be wearing sweats, they had better be the baggy kind with elastic cuffs—the very kind I loathed as a youngster and hoped never to wear again.

Alas, even an Unfashionista cannot resist the siren song of cultural relevance, so I had to bite the bullet and commit to the trendiest ugly silhouette of 2020.

And thus, I began the conversion of my too-short straight-leg pink pair of sweats into the bottom-cuff kind.

I checked to see whether I'd like the alteration by safety-pinning one leg in an approximation of the altered effect. It was a go!

 

Then I opened up a hole in the side seam at the bottom hem, threaded in a strip of elastic about the circumference of the bottom of my calf, and sewed it all back up! 

 

Instant modernity!

A second perusal of Instagram or Tik Tok quickly reveals that the preferred pairings with this type of sweatpants are either a matching sweatshirt or an ultra-cropped top of almost any sort. I made a valiant effort to follow the trend, wearing my new sweats for the first time with a cute crop top that I've had for almost 2 years and never worn.

The reason for the delay, of course, is that whenever it's cold enough to wear long sleeves, it's too cold to be showing one's midriff! I'll sacrifice my taste in the name of fashion, but never my body heat! I'd originally thought I might be able to wear the top to some event where crowds of humans would render the air warm enough that I'd be able to get away with uncovering my most thermally critical body part. But as crowds are out of the question for at least the remainder of this winter, I finally decided to give up on the impractical top.

After the hurried photo shoot (the brrr explains the blur!), I relegated it to the to-sell pile and traded it in for a less fashionable but more comfortable long-sleeved tee that completely covered me in blessed warmth.