dana's test blog: KID Shorts for Grosgrain

Hello Grosgrain friends. It's Dana from MADE. And like many of you, I've been following Kathleen's lovely site for years. So I'm honored to be a guest here today!

For the past two months, I've shared a slew of KID pants that are super easy to make and super comfy to wear.

So it was inevitable for summer...to take the pattern and chop it off!

Now we have:

My little guy's gonna wear a lot of these come June, July, August (September, October, and November? You know what it's like living in Texas....)

And they're gonna save on the clothing budget as well, since you only need about 1/2 yard of fabric!

Adjusting the pattern from pants to shorts is easy to do.

First print off the Basic Pants pattern found HERE.
* You'll automatically be prompted to open the 6-page pdf in Preview
* Save and/or print the doc to your home printer
* Make sure you print in LANDSCAPE!

We'll be using the "flat front" portion of the pattern and using the Flat Front Pants tutorial to sew the shorts.

You'll need about 1/2 yard of fabric, 1-inch wide elastic, and your updated shorts pattern--which we're going to make below!

To shorten the Pants Pattern you have options:

I like a Bermuda shorts length--as pictured above on my son--so I used the bottom of page 2 as the cut-off length. Then I traced the top of the old pattern onto new paper (tape a few pieces of white paper together) and drew the sides of the legs about 1/2 inch wider on each side. This keeps the shorts from tapering at the knee.

And you're got the front of your pattern piece done!

Do the same for the back pattern piece. Use the pants pattern to trace the top of the pattern piece,

Then lay the new shorts front piece on top of that to trace the wider legs (so the front and back have matching leg widths).

Lay both pattern pieces on your folded fabric and cut two of each.
Then follow the Flat Front Pants tutorial to sew them up.

The only tricky thing with making shorts is that when ironing and turning things right-side out, it's easy to confuse the top of the shorts with the bottom of the shorts. I know that sounds dumb. But trust me, I've done it a dozen times...twisting and turning, trying to remember which side is the top. But with the flat front pattern, you'll always find the top of the shorts because one part is wider than the other (while the legs are the same width). This is how the top of the shorts should look: