Bermuda Was Inadvisably Sewn In One Day

Pants (and by extension, shorts) have been my nemesis for as long as I’ve been sewing, with my only success being a pair of knit pants I whipped up one afternoon. I’ve tried everything to make the perfect pants pattern – altering commercial patterns, drafting my own, and tracing RTW pants that fit. The one success I made came from tracing a pair of RTW pants, freehand, onto some old fabric I had lying around. But a freehand trace right onto the fabric is hardly reproducible! So I was back at square one.

My successful knit pants.

A few weeks ago, a friend gave me a several pairs of pants and jeans she no longer wanted, and I found among them a pair of pants which I just barely squeezed into. Aside from being a mite too small, they fit and flattered me pretty well! so I took them apart and used the pieces to make a pattern.

A glimpse of deconstructed RTW.

Pattern pieces, laid out.

Shorts are just pants with the lower legs cut off, so I made the pattern pieces twenty-four inches long; ample for any shorts I might make and easy to extend into pants. I added seam allowance all around the pieces because the original pants had stretch, and my seersucker did not. I was very happy to have a small pile of scraps and a 3/4 yard remnant after I’d finished cutting out all the pieces. I love how tightly compacted my cutting layouts are, because it maximizes the remainder of the fabric, allowing you get another project or two (or three!) out of it. Waste not want not, and all that jazz.

All cut out and ready to sew!

Patternmaking is – for me – mentally intense, and finding the straight grain and cutting the pattern are always a slog after getting through the patternmaking. If I finish these steps late in the day, I typically leave the next steps, machine basting and fitting, for the subsequent day. If I am unlucky/foolish, however, I finish early in the day and zoom right on to those next steps. That's what I did today, and whew! Every time I do this, I am wiped out and useless for the rest of the day.

I made sure to take a few pictures of my proto-shorts, to diagnose fit issues before the final sewing, so hopefully things go smoothly for that phase of things.