Baby Shorts

Shorts weather is here!  We had our last last cold spell (if you can even call it that) weeks ago here and we have lots of hot and muggy weather to look forward to until November.

my daughter had one pair of shorts and I am pretty sure it is impossible to survive summer with one pair of shorts.  So I used her old shorts to make a pattern and sewed up two new pairs of shorts for her.

I go back and forth on which pair I like most, I think right now my favorite are the pink hearts.  They remind me of the stuff my mom used to dress me in back in the '80's.  I got the heart fabric from JoAnn's.

The purple dot fabric I also got from JoAnn's, but probably 2 years ago.

Both pairs have a simple elastic waist band.  The little tie on these purple ones is just decorative.  I learned the hard way that you have to sew the tie on perpendicular to the way you want the finished tie to go.

I actually made both pairs of shorts using the same pattern.  I traced some old shorts to make the pattern, just like I did when I made Easy shorts last year.  Then I put them together a bit different to get the two looks.

For the purple ones, I sewed the side seam on the shorts first, then I gathered the legs a bit and sewed the band on the bottom.  Then they just sewed up like normal shorts.

The pink ones were a bit trickier.  I sewed the inseam part first.  Then rounded the corners on the front and back and I added the ruffle by sewing the raw edge of the ruffle to the edge of the shorts.  I pressed and top stitched the ruffle down and sewed raw edge above the ruffle under.

I top stitched the front and back pieces together. So I ended up with the two legs holes.

Then I stuck one leg hole inside the other to sew them together at the crotch.

Bring on the heat, we are ready for summer!