Rydia Leggings

The leggings were a very difficult problem to solve, and I am pretty sure I went about it very ineffectively.  Rydia's leggings have giant openings toward the top with golden trim on the edges and lots of fancy gold designs.
 

 I was able to purchase leggings in a very similar color that were super opaque (partly because they were a one-size-fits-all and actually men's leggings).  That's the only piece that ended up going according to plan.


Lessons learned:

1. Do not cut stretchy material while wearing it, as it may result in overstretching and/or warping.  I thought it would be a great idea to cut the leggings into just the right shape while I had them on.  The material ended up stretching out significantly in the thigh and had to be hemmed.
2. Match the stretchiness of the fabrics being sewn together.  I really wanted to match the trim on the leggings to the yellow fabric I picked out for the rest of the outfit.  But, the yellow fabric is not stretchy as all, and in fact is downright slippery to work with!  I was able to overcome the issue with fastidious execution.  I basically measured out one-inch increments of the stretchy fabric while wearing it, and then pinned those stretched out increments to one-inch sections on the trim.  Heck of a lot of pinning work.

The slippery yellow fabric also frays very easily.  In order to make the trim, I folded and ironed the strips of trim into quarters, with the raw edges tucked into the center.  This technique seemed to work well.

I could not solve how to make the pretty swirly designs in the yellow fabric, and ended up using some of the leftover material from covering the interior of the boots.  The discontinuity in colors is a bit bothersome, but it was certainly better than not including the details at all.  I used Elmer's spray adhesive to get the designs to stick to the leggings and then did some hand-stitching to ensure they would not fall off.