Closet Case Files: Ginger Shorts

 

Ginger shorts (jorts?). My daughter has a pair of piping hot shorts that has some design features that I wanted to copy, they have bright pink serging that's exposed with the cuff turned up plus a bright pink topstitched back pockets. I tried to get the same feel with these shorts but I don't think I went quite far enough and the single topstitched back pocket just looks odd to me now.

 

Nothing new fit wise (same as the last pair of jeans, I did notice excess on the side of my leg that didn't show up in my jeans so I've adjusted the pattern for next time.

 

The fabric was a remnant scrap from a garage sale, just managed to squeeze the shorts out of it and the pocket bags are a quilting cotton from my stash.

 



Jalie 2908: Shorts

So you may be thinking you have seen these before, same fabric, same notions and pattern! A couple of changes though, wider leg pattern and the waistband. I've had a lot of trouble with my pants waistbands stretching out while wearing and have tried stay tape but that can make the pants a bit too tight to sit in comfortably.

So these pants have elastic in the waistband, very similar to this tutorial by Debbie Cook which she credits back to Sandra Betzina. I changed it slightly by making the pants to fit my waist when I'm sitting down and adding the elastic to fit when I'm standing up. So when I'm wearing them they have a mostly smooth waistband that stretches a couple of inches when I sit down (which is great if your waist measurement changes by about 3" when you sit down like mine does!)

The only elastic I had in a similar width was about 1/2" thinner than the waistband so I'm not sure how it will wash, it might need to be tacked down to stop it rolling. But I can say they fit really nice, snug when standing and comfy when sitting (compared to using stay tape which can dig in a bit sometimes).

I wore them all day today (which is why they were so wrinkly in the pics, sorry!), and while the legs stretched out a lot the waistband stayed fine. I did find that the elastic in the waist did hoick the back up a bit though so I really need to lower the back crotch by a little bit and lower the front waistband by about 1cm next time but I want to wear these around for a while first and see how they go.

My blog is going to be a bit light on the garment sewing for the next month or so, I have a baby quilt I need to sew, finish the Mario QAL quilt, make a Karate belt display quilt (which I still have to think about) and a Xmas quilt before Christmas!! So my poor V8333 jacket and the Colette Macaroon that I've half muslined up is going to have to wait.