Leggings, and Questionable Improvements

Why on earth did it take me this long to make myself leggings? This has to be one of the easiest things I've ever done! I make kid leggings all of the time and they come together in a flash, I guess I just have the idea in my head that sewing for myself is intrinsically harder?

This isn't even a pattern. I just traced around the pair that fit best, and when I was done and noticed that they crumpled at the ankles just like the other pair, I cut off a few inches and re-hemmed them into the new best fitting pair I own. Magic :)

I did it all with a zigzag stitch on a regular machine. I just used a narrow stitch for the seams and a wider one to catch the fabric on the cuffs and waistband. As you can see above I was super impatient and made these with dark green thread because I was out of black.

The waistband is sewn the same way, but with elastic in it obviously. I just measured the elastic in the original leggings. Ta-da! That's it, it's really that easy. So easy that I went straight back to raid my stash for anything else remotely legging-like. I came up with two other possibilities, but both had a print to them as well and I know from experience how hard that can be to work into an outfit later. They both had solid colours on the reverse that looked just fine, but what a waste of a nice print fabric...

The solution? Reversible leggings! Best idea ever! In theory. I chose flat felled seams (like on your jeans) as my method for flat, enclosed seams. Worked beautifully to attach the top pieces together as you can see below. (The wobbles are mostly due to the fabric not lying flat.)

Then we got to the legs. First seam is outside, so no problem. Second needs to run flat down one layer of the leg, which means bunching  up the bottom of the tube (leg) against the machine as you go because the legs are so narrow.  Ugh. Giant disaster. Below is the beautiful seam I was left with.

So, what to do? I can't unpick the seam because that always destroys knits. I would normally just cut it out and but I just barely had enough fabric to start with and making them any narrower would probably doom them to be too small. I might just have to give up on this pair being reversible and flip them to the print side. Which is lovely, but loses me my solid red pair :(

I have one more piece of reversible knit to play with and am determined to figure this out! Maybe a really skinny french seam wouldn't be too noticeable? Hand sewing would give me nice flat-felled seams but probably not stretch very well.

Any thoughts on how I should save this pair or do the next?