Quick and Easy Shorts! *tutorial*

Finally a crafty post! Here’s an easy project to do while you enjoy your last day of summer!

I found this fabric in the remnants bin at Hobby Lobby at the beginning of the summer. When I got it home I realized how little of the fabric was there! I loved the small polka dots and so I set to work finding a pattern for this little amount of fabric.

One of my favorite go-tos for projects like this is the book One-Yard Wonders. In the book there is a pattern for sleep shorts and I knew that was going to be my project!

The pattern is simple enough.  Measure your hips, measure the rise (from your waist, between your legs and then back up to your waist on the backside) and decided on long you want the shorts to be.  Plug your numbers into the equation and voila! A pattern that actually fits you! (After making this I felt that I needed a little more room in the butt so next time I am going to give myself four inches for the back instead of three inches.)

Now that you’ve got your measurements create your pattern. I used basic tissue paper for mine.

Lay the pattern out on your fabric. Be sure that you allow room for any patterns.

Cut!

 

Put right sides together and sew together your sides. I used a 1/4″ seam but feel free to use a more standard 5/8″ seam. I didn’t wash my fabric beforehand so I used a small seam to allow for some shrinkage in the wash.

Now it’s time to sew the crotch together. (Don’t you wish there was a nicer way to say that?)

***Would’ve been nice if I’d taken a picture of the hem, eh?***

Now that the shorts have been sewn hem the bottoms. Feel free to make this has small or as large of a hem as you’d like.

 

For the waistband fold the fabric as you’d wish and sew along the bottom of the fold. Leave an opening for your elastic in the back of the shorts. ( It’ll be a good reference point for the back of the shorts when you want to wear them)

The best way I’ve found to thread elastic is to attach a safety pin and the end of the elastic. This gives you something to grab on to as you work.

Pull the elastic threw and sew together. Take care not to turn the elastic in ANY way so that it lays flat in the waistband.

Sew your opening closed.

Tada! Shorts!

Like I said before, I felt like I needed a little more room in the butt because I feel like they dip in the back. It’s not as noticeable as I thought but it feels very noticeable. Especially when I squat down.

Charlotte felt she needed to be in the picture to 🙂

Overall I love the shorts and I love that I was able to use this fabric! They were so simple to make and they look nice enough that I can wear them out to the store and yet they are super comfy as well.

I hope you all are able to make some shorts from your own patterns!

Happy Crafting!

 

 

 

 

 

Men’s Shirt Refashion Part Three (Putting it Together)

So by this point everything is looking good and just needs some final steps!

I sewed the top of the lace to the base of the collar on the inside of the shirt. Very important. You want the lace on the outside to have a clean nice line and this is the easiest way to hide any bumps.

After the lace is attached, cut the the shirt at the base of the collar. Be careful not to cut the lace! Do not cut past the lace; in fact cut a little shy of it. You’ll avoid possible fraying from the opening being too large.

Pull the lace through the opening. And start sewing! Sew along the side edges to be sure that the lace is properly attached to the shirt. I used my zig zag stitch to make life easier.

This is what your shirt should look like. I mentioned in part one that my lace ended up being to long.

If your is too don’t worry! Just pull at the base of the lace until your rows match the bottom of the shirt.

If you do this after you’ve sewn on the lace it will be easier because it will stop unraveling where the seam is.

After you’ve corrected the lace (if needed) cut the shirt behind the lace. The seam you created when sewing on the lace will keep the shirt from fraying too much. Just be sure to cut as close as possible!

Ta-da! Isn’t it pretty? I’m sure yours looks even better.

Now if you’re wanting to add the lace to the sleeves as well, that parts even easier. Line up the lace with the sleeve based on where you’d like and sew it on! I placed my lace on the underside of the seam so it was inside the shirt just as I did with top of the back lace.

See? Easy.

The shirt is now finished! Hooray!!

The lace turned out awesome and the shirt did as well. I think I need to make another swatch of this lace in another color to add to another shirt. It really was a fun project! I can’t wait to see what you guys are able to create.

Happy Crafting!

Links:

Men’s Shirt Refashion Part One (The Lace)

Men’s Shirt Refashion Part Two (The Shirt)

 

Men’s Shirt Refashion Part Two (The Shirt)

Even though the shirt looks pretty big it was pretty close to being the right size (if I were to were men’s dress shirts). The neck was snug and the sleeves were perfect if I wore the shirt with cufflinks (since this was more a tuxedo shirt). With all of that fiting pretty well I didn’t need to do much.

I cut off the collar because even though I wanted a bit of a collar the full thing was just too much.

See? So much better.

I cut off the sleeves because I wanted to pull the seem higher and I wanted them to open at my elbow.

I used the sleeves themselves as the pattern to cut them a bit shorter. I also had the crease of the sleeve match up with the crease in the opening.

The arm hole opening was  little big for my taste so I brought it in about an inch and made a smaller opening. I also took in the sides until about my hips the same amount to create a smaller silhouette.

Now I just had to pin the sleeves back on the shirt and get to sewing! The sleeves didn’t line up perfectly so I cut a little more off the top to get a nice clean line.

After the sleeves were added I wanted to do something with the cuff. It was just a bit too long.

So I cut it at the first button hole then did a basic zig zag stitch to keep it from fraying.

I forgot to take a picture of this stage but I also put two darts in the front of the shirt to give it more of a flattering shape. The darts are just right under my bust line and end before my hips. I’ve done darts from the side seam in to the bust line but I don’t always like the way they turn out. This worked out well for me.

So there’s the shirt itself! The back was left alone because that’s where the lace is going to be. It didn’t seem to make sense to me to do a lot of work to that portion of the shirt when it’s going to be changing anyway!

Part three is coming soon so keep reading!

Happy Crafting!

Links:

Men’s Shirt Refashion Part One (The Lace)

Men’s Shirt Refasion Part Three (Putting it Together)

Men’s Shirt Refashion Part One (The Lace)

Here’s part one of the tutorial for this awesome shirt!

I had seen pictures of shirts with lace down the middle back of them. It had been suggested that you could simply sew the lace over an existing shirt then cut out the fabric. Sounds like a wonderful idea! Instead of buying lace (what would be the fun in that) I decided to make it myself.

For the past few months I have been falling in love with the vintage pineapple pattern. It is so easy and looks so fun! I thought this would be a perfect design to try out for the shirt. Here is the pattern I used:

The pattern was taking from this Russian website were they were discussing how to make the crochet shorts Kate Hudson wore in Something Borrowed.

I used a steel hook  size 00 or 3.5 in metric. For the length I repeated the pattern three and half times to get four and half total blocks. The color choice for this project was not mine. I asked Charlotte to pick out her favorite color of crochet thread and she picked this peacock blue. Good thing I liked it!

For this project I actually blocked the lace once I was finished with it. I know that you are suppose to do it for every project but normally the things I work on, blocking does not matter. I thought it would in this case. Boy did it!

Before I blocked out the lace it appeared to be the correct length. Once it was blocked out and sewn on the shirt it ended up being too long. Thankfully you can always undo what you’ve done in crochet and I took the rows out that were too long. I actually like the look of the bottom of the lace more now that I did when I completed a full pineapple block.

When I was working on the sleeves I thought an additional pop of color would be a fun addition. I used the excess thread from the original lace design and set to work on a pineapple for each elbow. I used the same pattern, just modified it to show just the pineapple. Here’s the modified pattern.

I used the same steel hook as the main piece. Although it doesn’t show in my modified pattern I have the end double crochet stitches anchored to the previous end double crochet stitches so I had a solid line on either side to sew. (Does that make sense?)

Here’s the finished sleeve piece.

For some reason I see little owls in the pineapples. When I have time I may figure out how to modify the pattern further so they are owls. Later this week I’ll show you how to sew everything in! I hope all of you are as excited as I am to see it come together!

Happy Crafting!

Links:

Men’s Shirt Refashion  Part Two (The Shirt)

Men’s Shirt Refashion Part Three (Putting it Together)