Beautiful Chaos: Spurge Flower Pants

Over this past summer our property was inundated with flowering spurge. I got absolutely fascinated by them. Not only are they the strangest, richest colour, but they are also weird as. They start with one large flower which sprouts two smaller flowers. Each of these sprout two more small flowers etc. The most layers I counted this summer was 4. Awesome. A living fractal reiterating itself.
Well it got me going I can tell you. I had to make myself a pair of pants with this amazing flower represented on them.
I used my standard wide leg pants pattern, but I widened the leg even more to make them super bell bottom. I have worn them and worn them and worn them.

Gina, who is one of my repeat customers, spotted them on a picture I had on my website and they sparked her interest. Gina has bought several garments from me and has started to get me to make customized art wear for her. She is great to work with. She takes the seeds of what I make and develops the idea in her own way, extending and pushing my original concept. She has great ideas and a creative mind and is very clear about what she wants. It's great for me as it takes all the guesswork out of the process and because she has come back several times now I'm no longer nervous that she won't like what I do for her.
A while ago I made her a beautiful two piece that I was so happy with.

The design on these is based on the seed pod of a native kowhai tree. Gina wanted her new pants to have a similar feel to these, with the applique showing around the leg from different angles. The spurge design is perfect for this.
I started with a beautiful pale green/grey wool blend. Perfect for the coming winter and, once again, used my favorite pants pattern as the base.
The first step was making the piping for the pockets. I love these pockets, they are big and practical and have cute little pixie peaks on them.

The next bit is the applique. This is my absolute favorite part of what I do. Gina had specified that she didn't want the orange cuffs, just the applique, but she also wanted me to extend the idea by adding another tone of teal to the original design. Fun! So I started with the two teal fabrics and decided to use the dark one on the base and the paler one on the top. First I fused a light bonding web onto the back of the fabrics and drew my first form onto the back of the dark teal. I cut the design, flipped it over and lightly marked it out on the light teal. This gave me the basic size to work the smaller pieces within.

Next I fused the two layers together.
Then positioned the design onto the pant legs and ironed down. Next I satin stitched around the top layer, then around the bottom layer. Stabilizer is so important for this part. When I first started doing applique I hadn't gotten on to stabilizer and the edges of my designs would often pucker and ripple.

As soon as I had finished this stage I saw potential to step it up a notch. I wanted to machine embroider the light teal with some sort of textural pattern. I needed to run this by Gina as machine embroidery is labour intensive and would add a chunk of $ to the original price.
I had a short wait and Gina was into it! She gave me the go ahead with bells on. Yay!
As soon as I had her approval I hit the sewing machine. I have a collection of beautiful sari silk threads in various variegated colours, I used a beautiful dark teal and white to embroider leaf forms all over the lighter shapes. Beautiful!