I wear short shorts.... and I also make them

So, I was recently at a fabric haunt of mine when I found this awesome retro-looking fabric; very 1960s Aloha airlines if you know what I mean... see for yourself!



What to do with such awesomely good fabric? It's obviously much too big for my usual zippered pouches or clutches, so I made some groovy shorts! I used a pattern that my mom had bought ages ago to make us walking shorts when we were little, but the problem was that I've since gotten bigger, and the pattern makes shorts that are granny in a big way- very high waisted, poochy at the crotch and almost to your knee in length! Blegh! So, I had to waste some of my junker fabric to make a new pattern; I find that I work better with patterns if they are in fabric (with fusible webbing ironed on the back to make it stiffer) than if they are on that tissue-paper like pattern sheet, which I usually end up tearing or cutting into in my frenzy to create. After making the pattern, these shorts were a breeze to make and took me about half an hour from cutting to stepping into the leg holes of my newly sewn shorts for the first time.


Please forgive the crappy hanger and brightness... but I absolutely love the way they came out! They are made with about 3/4 of a yard to 1 yard depending on your size (maybe even 1/2 a yard of fabric if you are tiny) with enough left over to make something small out of the scraps. There are only 4 peices, and the top part of the shorts folds over to be sewn into tubing for an elastic waistband (tres comfortable), which you can then embellish with a sweet ribbon or button. I left this one plain though, the print was enough already!