Rouleur Leggings – cycling bibs

Pattern: Rouleur Bibs by Fehr Trade
Size Range: XXS (35.5″ hip) to XL (48″ hip)
Size Chosen: Small
Current Measurements: Bust 36″, Waist N/A, Hips 37.5″
Fabric: Tia Knight Fabric, supplex sport 4-way stretch fabric

A cycling holiday to the Netherlands was on the horizon. Ferry from Newcastle, ten days of exploring the country, and then home. Taking our own bikes was the most sustainable way of doing this, and also meant that we didn’t have to worry about transporting Lachie between the ferry and a cycle hire place. And we’d be familiar and happy with our machines!

One complication: I would be 12 weeks pregnant. The shape of my body changed quickly in early pregnancy and it wasn’t long before my cycling shorts were cutting right across my belly. I decided the best way forward was to make something that would be wearable all through pregnancy and beyond: cycling bibs. I knew that Fehr Trade, run by Melissa Fehr, had a pattern for bibs, and so was researching the Rouleur bibs before you could blink. Online reviews of the pattern were incredibly reassuring, and I was positive that this was doable. And, as an added bonus, it was a halter neck pattern: I bought the pattern, the fabric and the foldover elastic and waited eagerly for the delivery.

For the sake of the planet, I have been trying to move away from polyester, and had started researching merino for sportswear, but haven’t gotten very far with that yet. There’s a distinct lack of merino jersey at a suitable weight for sportswear in the UK, but I am hoping that a couple of leads will work out soon. In the meantime I went with something I knew would be wicking, dry quickly and would work for this pattern.

Melissa has an excellent resource on her website of sportswear fabric by country. I chose Tia Knight as a retailer as it wasn’t too pricey and offered both patterned and plains, as well as the powernet I needed. The most difficult part was choosing the look, but I decided on this 70’s-ish flower fabric and paired it with anthracite sports lycra and power mesh.

Cutting out pattern and fabric	2 hours
Sewing together the shorts	1.5 hours
Sewing and attaching the bib	1.5 hours
Total	5 hours

You know when you start sewing a pattern and you just have a Good Feeling? Well, as soon as I started sticking this pdf together this feeling grew and grew. It was a good pattern: easy to put together, and everything seemed to match nicely. It took about half an hour to get the pattern cut out, no problem, and then I started to cut out the fabric.

I decided to do this on a single layer so as to have the best chance possible of keeping it all straight and not having a warped grain. And, because the pieces are so small, I was able to do most of it on the mat and rotary cutter, which is infinitely more pleasant when working with super stretchy fabric! The only change I made to the size small was to cut the centre front piece as a medium, and then gathered it onto the short piece. This will hopefully give me a wee bit of belly-growth space for future cycles.

It was a couple of nights later before I started sewing and I was blown away: the bibs came together remarkably quickly and they are so good! Everything was just perfect: notches lined up, pieces fitted together well, it was interesting and leads to a very clever finished piece so was just great fun too. I couldn’t believe how easy it all was, even my overlocker behaved!

There’s no inseam, so there’s no chaffing to worry about while sitting on the bike. The pockets are genius and hold my phone comfortably, and I love the possibilities for colour blocking and invention. I say there’s no inseam, however I did spend a very long time carefully lining up one of my leg cuffs to my inner thigh. Why, I have no idea as I successfully made sure the other was to the back, but this cuff does catch on the seat, which is unfortunate… lesson well and truly learned there!

My bib straps did end up being very long, so I’ve doubled them over and not cut it, yet.. I wore them like this all holiday and I just haven’t gotten round to cutting off the excess. I don’t know why, though the foldover elastic has a wobble too it, and I am pretty sure that I was too cautious about not over tightening it as I sewed.

My sister in law (to be!) told me that the one negative about bibs was that you had to take off all your overlayers to go to the loo, and that’s another thing about this clever, clever pattern: instead of a three-way strap (two shoulder straps and a strip down the back), this is a halterneck, which means it can be taken over the head and then threaded through underneath my top to get the bibs off easily. You can tell Melissa actually does the exercise that these are designed for, as who else but a cyclist would think of this?

I then forgot to put the pad in until the night before we were going on holiday… eek!!! But it turned out that that was also easy enough too. I put the bibs on inside out, pinned in the key points of the pad, and then sewed it with a zig-zag. I should have done this before the mad packing night, but maybe it didn’t matter too much, we were packing very lightly after all, so there wasn’t much to faff with.

Bibs done, I decided I needed a cycling top. At the time the weather forecast was looking pretty nice for the Netherlands, and I have very few tops that are hot weather/ cycling friendly. I’d bought the Steeplechase pattern, but time was now short enough that I didn’t want to use an unknown. Instead I pulled out my Tried and Tested t-shirt pattern and thought I’d make a short-sleeved top with that. When it turned out I didn’t have enough of the anthracite to make the whole top, I decided to add a flowery panel on the front and then (because it wasn’t complicated enough, yet) add a visible zip as well.

It turns out I absolutely love it. There are errors, yes – I wouldn’t recommend sewing your first ever visible zip in lycra, and the collar is really too short, but so many successes. First up, look how cute it is!!! And it fits, and it gives me a cycling set like some MAWIL*. Just who I dream of being.

*Middle aged woman in lycra.

It made me realise how useful it is to have a block. I love my t-shirt block, but this is the first time I’ve used it for something a bit different. And it was so easy. Just look, the sleeves are shorter, but hey, they’re perfect! And the two tone part is actually making me love it more (to make it road safe, it might be better if there was more colour on the back, but never mind). I shaped the back to give me coverage, and that was easy too! I made it not too fitted around the waist, and that was pretty successful, but I forgot to make the front a bit gathered so sadly this will not last all through my pregnancy. I will need to wait for another 10 months + to find out how well it really fits me. But hey, it still proves that the block works, and that, for me is a real Win.

So from a Really Good Pattern and a Highly Successful Block, I gained a nifty wee cycling set just in time for my holiday.

The weather turned out to be pretty grey, and most days saw me wearing more layers than just this set, but I did love it. I am still so pleased with how they all came together and just really excited with the potential. My next set will definitely be merino, and I need to source some soon. I have a lead to follow up on… watch this space!

And the holiday overall was utterly brilliant. I absolutely loved it. Lachie loved his wee trailer and exploring new places. Joey and I found the cycling fun and what a brilliant way of exploring the Netherlands. We stayed on the island of Texel for several days, which was amazing. Birds everywhere. It looked like one of the dreamscape RSPB pictures of what wetlands should be like: avocets, terns (including sandwich terns!), spoonbills, great white egrets, shoveller… honestly, what a dream.

A real highlight however, was cycling across the sea dyke which crosses from Enkhuizen to Lelystad. It was 30km of cycling, separated from traffic, beside the most beautiful wildflower banking, the sea on the other side. It was just wonderful. And, afterwards, we were next to the Oostvaardersplassen national park which was one of my favourite places I went to. We saw a bluethroat, for goodness sakes! It’s grazed by cattle and Konik ponies, the latter of which I saw, and the whole place just teemed with life. I would have happily spent several more days exploring, but alas, we only had one.

Really it was a brilliant holiday. In the best possible way it demonstrated how I could incorporate the bike into more of what I do, and gave us a freedom from the car in the most satisfying way possible. I hope you’ve got some lovely adventures planned for this summer?