How to Sew Tie Leggings

Make ballet inspired tie leggings

Hey y’all – today we’re wrapping up the leggings series with an advanced class – how to take your basic leggings pattern and add details like pockets and ankle straps – really, whatever your imagination comes up with!

If you missed the other parts in this series, you check them out in the links below.
How to Make a Leggings Pattern
Leggings Fabrics
Leggings Waistbands

It’s no secret that I love fashion inspired by the world of ballet, so leggings with ankle straps reminiscent of ballet shoes are right up my alley. But if that’s not your jam, stick around anyway – the pattern altering principles in this post can be applied to create any style you chose.

The pattern making principle I’m talking about today is that once you have a pattern sloper that fits you, like the leggings sloper we drafted at the beginning of this series, you can add design lines/seam lines anywhere you chose. I have a video explaining this and showing how I sewed the pair I’m wearing in this post, which you can also watch on YouTube here if it won’t load below for some reason.

To make this pair, I started with the sloper with lines drawn in black below, and I cut everywhere I added a red line.

The only thing you have to remember about cutting your pattern on style lines is to add seam allowances – that’s it! So my pattern pieces for the style lines I drew above looked like the drawing below.

Once those pieces are sewn back together where you cut for style lines, then you proceed to sew the leggings together as explained in the how to make leggings post and the waistband post. The video above shows how to add the ties to the hems.