FINISHED! Bubble Shorts

I really like the Colette Iris shorts. They are a great pair of classy shorts and the ones I made with my giveaway denim are on high rotation in my wardrobe. I plan to make another pair, but I also like a slightly slouchier, baggier short.

For ever I have had a pair of shorts pinned on my pinterest board from Hello Beautiful The problem is that they are for a little girl. Not a woman of substantial more years...but I didn't care and continuted to think about them. Oh who cares about age appropriate! 

I was down at the fabric shop on Saturday for no other reason than it was Saturday and they are closed on Sunday and I have a voucher so was looking for something to do (!!!?) and found some navy linen which reminded me that I wanted to make a pair of baggy/cuffed shorts. I then started flicking through the pattern books (which I never do) for shorts patterns and found Burda 7227 which I figured looked easy enough and sort of the same style.  So given all the patterns were half price I bought it and 1.4 m (as per pattern). By the way, I was surprised that these shorts would need that much fabric but there you go.

Once I got home I googled the pattern and  found the cheekychacha had made them for her daughter. Not sure what to say about my style icons! A 5 year old and a tween.. feeling a bit like a phoney making a burda 'young' pattern I continued. I wanted them to be slightly 'rounder' than the pattern picture, so cut out the 12 although realistically should have cut the 10 as there is a bit too much fabric around the waist which you can see bunching up a bit in the photos. 

The make is easy but seemed to take me quite a while to finish. I used elastic in the waist as per the pattern  but instead of putting elastic in the legs, gathered (not very evenly sadly) the legs and added the cuff on. 

There's not much more to say except that pocket sits pretty low so it's hard to comfortably put your hands in - I feel like I have to lean down.  Clearly made for someone with longer arms.

I think this is a semi success. I'm a fan of these shorts despite the fact that they might not be the most flattering thing I own. I feel very comfortable in the style.  It feels me. The only thing is that despite wanting a slouchy, casual elastic waisted short, I now feel that the elastic in the waist lets it down and I probably should have looked harder for a style with a  zip closure.

But will I wear them? You bet! In fact I'm going to wear this exact outfit to work tomorrow for 'casual' friday.

The shorts are of course paired with my Valentino Silk Scout tee and yes, I have to take those Christmas lights out of the garden this weekend!

FINISHED! Iris shorts in giveaway denim

It feels like it's been a while since some selfish sewing, so I'm happy to introduce you to my Iris shorts in giveaway denim.

Giveaway denim? Well, a couple of weeks ago I was the lucky winner of some fabric from Gabrielle which she was giving away to celebrate 3 great years of blogging.  I was ecstatic!  I had been searching for denim like the one offered for ages and here it was. Only  0.6 x 1.3 m of it, but just perfect.  A heavy light blue denim. Oh and how about that fantastic YSL colouring book that came with it!!

So I didn't have much denim to work with, but I was convinced that I could get a pair of shorts out of the fabric.  Enter the Colette Patterns Iris shorts.   I had just enough to make the size 6.  I had to do the waistband facing and the pocket lining in Liberty. You can imagine how much I hated that!!?  I got to use up some of Tom's Jets fabric which was great.

So here they are! I love them. I know this pattern has been around for a while and it's not really news, but the pockets are too cute in that front seam.  The denim provides a great retro feel to them. I'm wearing it here with Pattern W from Les Couleurs Francaise made up in  Liberty of London, Wiltshire.

In the end the 6 was a bit baggy around the waist so ended up taking them in on the sides. Next time I'll make the 4 up in maybe a slightly lighter weight fabric as the invisible zipper doesn't really like going over the waistband seam. It was a straightforward make, although like all my easy makes I did rush them a bit. I could probably make some further adjustments but for a first attempt I think the fit is pretty good. 

FINISHED FIRST! Maritime Shorts

Happy Go Lucky 2013!

Yay! My first finished item for the year!  

I started these shorts a couple of days ago and then spent the morning finishing the waist and hemming them. It's nice to have done one piece of sewing during the Christmas holidays. I'm back to work tomorrow for a few weeks before I take some more time off towards the end of January.  Aah summer holidays.  Too short.

Pattern: Grainline Maritime Shorts
Material: Checked seersucker from the stash (bought at A2F in 2010 or 2011?) which I found during the post Christmas cleanup of my sewing cupboard.  I was inspired and thought they would look good as shorts for me. I had previously made a pair of long pants for Oliver out of this material but he wore the bottom out of them sliding down a skater half pipe at a birthday party.  Needless to say the pants never really recovered.
Size: 6 but next time I'll make a 4.  They are way too big around the waist and even though I took them in a bit at the back they are still a loose.  The ease will be ok if I ever wear them with stockings underneath.  Which I might.  But I won't be wearing them with anything tucked in.

This was my first time sewing a Grainline pattern and I will definitely sew it again.  The instructions and tutorial  were great.  There was quite a bit of basting going on with the zipper but I managed to get it in and overall the shorts are good.
The only real problem with the shorts is the matching of the material.  I thought I did the pattern placement really carefully but obviously not. Not at all! There are three slight 'issues'.

1.  Matching at the sides, although they do line up in a shadow way (the red stripe with the yellow).
2.  The pockets, but hey, now you can see the pockets! and
3.   The way I've cut the waistband onto the material.  D'oh.  It's curving the wrong way at the back.  I probably could have fixed this, but I'm calling them design features.  All of them.  I'm not that worried about the back waistband because the shorts are too big to tuck anything into anyway, so no-one will know.

So I'm calling these a win!  

Happy 2013 sewing!