Purple and Flyyy

My shorts are done! I love them!

 

 

I may go back and tweak the hem and slim some fullness out of the leg … or I may not.

 

 

They are fabulous and feel awesome! I love the cool, textured fabric and I love the little details I put into this project, like the front button fly with loops instead of button holes:

 

I also made two openings, the above pictured button fly and a side zip:

 

These shorts are definitely a success and a major plus for my wardrobe! And I think I finally cracked the crotch-curve code, so look out for a video on drafting your own pants patterns some time in the future.

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.

They’re All Going to Laugh At You

The last time I wore shorts, I was eleven years old.

I remember that last day, and the shorts I was wearing – in fact, the whole outfit I was wearing – like it was just yesterday.

My grade was on a whale watching cruise, and the weather was gorgeous. I’d picked out one of my favorite ensembles to celebrate both the fine weather and the special day. It was a white button-up shirt and lime green shorts held up with matching suspenders. The fabric for both was a mid-weight cotton that was always wrinkled, because I didn’t know you could iron play clothes. I thought I looked pretty fabulous.

In addition to always being wrinkled, the shirt-and-shorts combo was at least a year old, maybe even eighteen months old. Given the growth surge I was experiencing at the time, wearing something so old was definitely risky as far as a proper fit was concerned. In hindsight, I probably looked ridiculous, with my long, skinny legs cascading down from the too-short lime green-and-white get up, but I definitely didn’t have the gift of hindsight then.

I was fine until I had the misfortune of catching some of my classmates laughing at me: doubled over, can’t breathe, hysterical laughing. And these were boy classmates, at a time when I was beginning to vaguely understand the importance of male/female roles and relationships. I wasn’t sure what about me was so hilarious, and desperately hoped they weren’t actually laughing at me. Paralyzed by humiliation and confusion, I was uncharacteristically silent, unable to ask what was so funny. It was the last time I wore shorts.

In fact, for many years after that, I didn’t even expose my legs. I’d wear skirts here and there for special occasions, but always with tights. In my early-mid twenties, fueled solely by liquid courage, I recall wearing bare legs under a skirt precisely two times. And then the music stopped again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now I am older, wiser, and less inclined to shoulder the yoke of social acceptability. I am also drowning in fabric, especially old pieces which I bought for all the wrong reasons. One such piece, a purple and white checkered seersucker, has been on my radar for at least a year, but every project I wanted to use it for fell through. Today, I finally found its calling: shorts! Unabashedly preppy bermuda shorts, to go with my purple-on-white Nikes (another ill advised purchase, but these things happen). Perhaps I’ll pull out my sleeveless white polo shirt, to complete the prep school look I’ve always secretly admired. Stay tuned for the making of shorts, the baring of legs, and the adoption of a new look.