Make-It Monday: Reversible Shorts

There's a blog I've started reading recently; Make It Perfect.  It's a sewing blog and I love it!  One of the posts was about 2-in-1 shorts and the pattern was free to download from here.  So off I went and got the pattern for reversible shorts, thinking "Yeah, I can make shorts.  Easy."  This was a few weeks before I bought the Lazy Day shorts pattern. I printed everything out and read the instructions, left it for a few days, read through everything again, left it for a few days... And on it went. I then started the Lazy Day shorts and Elizabeth asked if I was making them for her. I explained that because I made her a dress, Toby was now getting shorts made for him. However, since I made her dress, E asks me to make lots of things now ("that's OK mummy, you can make Baby Annabel a new top" or "mummy, I think I want another dress now. A pink one.") so naturally she told me that I could make her shorts once I'd made Toby's. So kind of her. 

So this brought me back to these lovely looking reversible shorts from Make It Perfect.  Elizabeth saw the elephant fabric (Michael Miller's Elephant Romp Midnight) in my stash and asked for that so I got busy cutting. I made the first half fairly quickly (the elephant print side) but then switched to another project. I came back to complete these shorts a week or so later. Doing the shorts from the second fabric (plain turquoise cotton) was much easier as I felt more confident with what I was doing.  I even added a pocket which was an option within the instructions.  I then had to combine the two to make the shorts reversible. 

I spent a lot of time making sure my seams lined up and that everything was where it should be. I hadn't realised when I started these shorts just how important it would be for my sewing to be fairly accurate, at least at the points where the two pairs were going to be stitched together (waistband and leg holes). Luckily I did a good job and I didn't have any issues. Phew!

This time, getting the elastic in at the waist was much easier and I made the channel slightly bigger than I needed, to give myself a bit of room should my sewing not be as accurate as I would like. I really struggled with the hem on the leg holes actually. Each pair needed to be turned in and I found it difficult to get both parts to be equal. I took my time and got there in the end. Stitching it was then easy and I like the double row of stitching. 

I love these shorts, as does Elizabeth, but they were quite time consuming and tricky for someone just starting out. I feel I've done a great job though and because they're double layered, they feel really good and hang really well. I'll definitely use this pattern again but once I've got some experience under my belt.