Sailor Shorts

Hi, I am sorry for the prolonged silence. Life just overtakes you sometimes and a whole lot of stuff happened which I have now sorted and I am back to sewing with a vengeance. One of my goals for 2014 is to be better at sewing. I have ideas in my head but when it comes to execution, I sometimes ruin a garment because of massive unpicking and I put holes the fabric during the process. Or worse, I forget to put seam allowances or cut one fabric against the grain. You get the idea. That is why I keep practising with thrifted fabrics and sometimes, I buy extra large clothes because I can reuse the fabric to create something new.

 I like to create my own patterns and to be honest, I have never really been successful at following a commercial pattern. I find that I have to make adjustments to a commercial pattern so why not do them from scratch? I bought this great book called "Patternmaking Made Easy, 2nd edition" by Connie Amaden Crawford. She teaches you how to create slopers etc and then create variations from there.

LINK TO FREE PATTERN ON BURDA
I saw this pair of shorts on Burda and thought they were cute. However, shorts and pants are pretty difficult especially when it comes to the crotch length and after using the free pattern to make a mock up on a spare bedsheet, I found that it did not fit me right. So I had to go back to Ms Crawford's book and draft out a completely new pattern that fitted me.

I was in such a hurry to put them on to take a picture even before I completed hemming the left side.

Looking forward to wearing it in the summer!