The first week of July I had the gift of having energy and time to work fast and furious, and boy has it scratched an itch (I’ve barely made a thing since, and have gotten to some mending and resting). On the July 1 we were gloriously kid less and I was work less so I turned out the circle cut swimsuit and pink gingham bolero. I made matthew’s pants into shorts and darned some holes. Another night I started on mending a hole in his shirt. And then that Saturday, before a week away wherein I would not touch a machine, I made shorts.

i am shockingly, remarkably, bad at cutting threads in the making process. this was meant to show the contrast zip but you can see more importantly that there’s just ann extremely long thread still connected to the zipper region

Now, I knew I had the energy to go all or nearly all in on a project, and while I'm generally a fan of slow and steady and by necessity picking a project up over many nights, just this once I wanted to go start to finish. Plus vacation sewing energy I guess, as the heat wave had been making me really want to get shorts nailed down finally. (Previous attempts: yellow shorts - still kicking, ginger shorts - partially retired due to tooooo short in the inseam, Esther shorts - retired due to bad hem and not great to pull up and down, mizrahi shorts - kicking but not at all what I wanted, pink gingham - absolutely delightful, and the base/block for these).

So the Butterick 9779 pink shorts of June (future to be blogged) were a great success and lead me to think they can become a block. In previous runs of not taking notes, I knew something would be funky with the in or out seam but I wasn't sure what and didn't take the time to find out by walking seams. I'm going to make myself do that post vacation. (Note- I have done this! Hopefully the next round will be a bit better aligned… I don’t know what I’m doing quite enough to feel fully confident in this however)

Enough rambling; what I actually did

The originals are pocketless so I added in slash pockets. I added a full inch in total (1/4” to each piece) all around for a bit of ease. And I converted the front dart to a 1” deep pleat, following this tutorial.

I then cut quickly and not paying close enough attention to grainline FOR SURE. For example, I just straight up sliced into the tip of one of the back darts (cut double so through both sides!) with my rotary cutter (which i was using in the first place bc moving fast). I just sort of tried to make the slices fit into the darts, patched a bit, and it seems to be holding up more or less.

And basically sewed like mad. But also did French seams because finishing still matters.

Shockingly, I did not mess up order of operations even once. All seams are actually frenched (i have been known to go back to the natural feeling of right sides together and not be bothered enough to go back and frenchify), with the exception of the side zipper seam and the pocket bags, intentionally. The side zip seam I did self enclose for neatness.

I should revisit the waistband of this pattern which is slightly curved but I'm not sure if that was intentional or accidental on my part. In any case, I decided to add ban rol the entire length and shortened it down to 1” for this pair. I forgot to leave an underlap extension so it was touch and go to make the closure work. I quadruple topstitched the waistband bc one of my original lines looked really wonky so make it a design feature as we do!!

The pockets as I drafted am are just silly small, one of those things where it’s kind of hard to say why in the world you did it how you did it. I’ve redrawn them in my fixed up pattern, so hopefully next time will be better. One might argue that the pocket openings are also too small, but i haven’t adjusted this because i’m not sure if i’m the person who would argue that.

The hem, as mentioned, was not nicely aligned, but really other than the dart fiasco that’s my only actual complaint. It’s a really simple self draft, but still made me feel empowered.

Pattern: self draft based on Butterick 9779 block (i’d be happy to share the resulting draft if anyone in internetlandia has similar measurements and wants)
Fabric: gifted linen bedsheets from Emily Hitz
My Measurements: waist 30, hips 39
Worn with: pineapple tank top
Next time: I’ve hopefully trued the pattern properly and recut the pocket design, so really just need to redo the waistband, which I’ve tossed. And remember about underlaps.