What do you get if you take the pattern for a pair of pants and merge it with a pattern for a skirt? The answer is Culottes. Ever since I saw Megan Nielsen’s pattern for the Tania Culottes, I’ve been thinking about trying to reproduce the pattern as a small pattern making exercise for myself.

Judging by the nice fall of the skirt, I concluded that the base pattern for the skirt should be a full circle skirt. This simple sketch shows the basic pattern.

• Start with a circle, this will be the hemline of the culottes.
• Divide the circle into 4 parts. This is the start of two front pieces and two back pieces.
• Make an inner circle for the waistline.
• Remove two of the 4 parts, there’s no need to make duplicates. Also split the two left into two separate pieces. The split will become the side seam.
• To make the skirt into shorts and to hide the crotch seam, more fabric needs to be added in the front and back.
• After the added fabric, there should be a front and a back crotch seam.
• Finally add a bit of length to the back piece to accommodate for the bottom.

Here’s a tiny, tiny muslin (that probably fits a Barbie doll)!

Only problem is that I really need at least one pair of culottes for our trip to Japan and time is running short. In the end, I decided to buy the pdf pattern and try it out. To my delight, I wasn’t too far off with my first sketch. The pattern is rather easy to follow but hourglass- and pear-shaped women be warned, it looks like this pattern is made for almost rectangle shaped women. For me, there was a small problem with the top of the lining. I had to take in 1-1,5cm on both sides of the two lining pieces. That’s 4-6cm in total :O