Custom Art wear pants

Well it's been a while since I did a posting, but here we are.
I've been working on a beautiful pair of custom pants for Gina. She was inspired by a top that I had previously made, The Misty River Halter Top. I had a funny time with this top. I had it on my rack for three months and it just wasn't attracting any attention, then all in one day someone posted it on their blog, another woman bought the top, another woman asked me for a maternity top based on the design and Gina contacted me about pants inspired by it.

Funny and very serendipitous.

I was pretty excited by these pants. I really love the rust linen and swirly psychedelic blue applique fabric. It took a while to find time to make these, but it has finally happened.
After cutting and doing the first stages of construction I began working on the applique design.
Gina had asked me to send her some drawings of my design. I'd let her know that I don't really sketch my ideas, that I do the majority of my design process on the fabrics in front of me, and when I do draw my ideas the finished product looks nothing like what I had planned.
For some reason this interaction made me more aware of my design process as it was happening. What I discovered about the way I do this was really interesting(to me anyway).
I start by drawing a rough sketch with tailors chalk directly onto the pant leg. This gives me a rough idea of the size and shape of the forms I will use and of the directional sweep of my design.

Next using these lines as a guide I make "paper roughs". I play with these, shifting them around on the pant leg until I'm starting to feel happy with the general shape. As you can see the spiral of the second seed form is already facing the opposite direction. Ah ha!
The first sign of why my sketches are so different from the finished piece.

After I am happy with this I use the roughs as templates for my applique. It's during this stage that the clunky, out of balance shapes gain there flow.
Again see that the second spiral has changed direction again and is upside down to the two original stages.
After this it back to paper roughs to work out the next layer of the applique.
When I'm happy with this I cut the next fabric out and position them onto the first layer. Then fuse the whole thing down with wonder under and a hot iron. I have to be careful here that I don't shift or buckle the fabrics. Again you can see that the layout has changed. So much of what I do is intuition and based on a sense of when a design 'feels right.' It was good to get my head around this and to learn some more about my process.

From here it's pretty simple. Just satin stitch the applique edge, using a paper stabilizer to prevent the fabrics rippling and then finish constructing the pants. I love them! I hope Gina does too.