Ogden Cami from Repurposed Linen, True Bias

In December, Victoria offered up some of my brother's clothes before she put them in the donation box. Mom took some wool pants and I took a pair of the linen dress pants. I think I would like to wear more linen, so this seemed like a low risk way to start sewing with it.

They started as Banana Republic dress pants

They are brown with a lighter color stripe in the pattern

 I started by laying out the Odgen Cami pattern pieces to see if the leg width would give me enough fabric. I was ver close on the front piece, but no for the back piece. I had to get creative with deconstructing the pants and then piecing things together to get the fabric sizes I needed.

Inside of a pant leg, lining ends above the knees

I took both legs off and here's what was left

I also salvaged the four buttons and zipper for future projects

Once the legs were completely disassembled, I decided to cut the leg length in half and the sew those two pieces side to side. I carefully pinned along a strip in the pattern, but linen is slippery and things moved around when I was sewing. No worries, I like the look of seams on this repurposed fabric.

Pinning along the lines

Now it should be wide enough for pattern pieces

Fitting the back piece

Back cut and basted

Sewing in the lining

 The lining is made from two different cotton quilting fabric scraps. I had been making face masks for the last couple days and these were some of the larger scraps that I had left.

Top-stitching the neck-line

Raised front neckline

I changed the front neckline, squaring it off from the v-neck and the straps ended up twice the width of the original pattern. After cutting and sewing the first strap, I was unable to turn it inside out so I made two more each a quarter inch wider. Turning those inside out was not a problem.

The cami was finished recently, but it won't be warm enough outside to wear it outside for several more weeks. Pics are again on the self timer as we're still social distancing.

Maybe next time I'll raise the back too

Stripe matching is pretty good on the front

Fits well in armscye

We got sun today too