So these grey ones are over a year old… Oops? (Don’t tell me otherwise…)
There are many things in life that I forget about until it’s pretty much too late to fix it. Like buying toilet paper, laundry detergent, and apparently shorts?
I was surviving with only 2.5 pairs of shorts for last summer. (One pair is waaaaaay too small. Hence the 0.5). I live in a location much closer to the equator than I like, and you would think that shorts would be favorite, but I don’t gravitate to them. I did to gravitate my beloved cargo shorts, but I had to retire them last year…
It doesn’t help that I did my research in an off campus office building with what seems to be a Friday business casual dresscode, so shorts aren’t allowed unless you’re a boss. So I spend my weekday summer days in dresses and skirts to deal with that.
But on weekends I needed shorts. And now I’m in a job that I could wear shorts if I’d like (though I’ll still prefer jeans).
Let us get down to business then.
I was on vacation when I got the email that Megan Nielsen was releasing the Flint trousers/shorts pattern. When I looked at the samples and the line drawings, I was sold! In fact I had spent the previous couple days explaining to a friend that I really should cut my craft spending, and then had to deal with a judgement stare as I sat there ordering the pattern.
Because I’m in need of shorts right now, I decided to try them first, and it was probably for the best, as I needed to alter the pattern a bit. My muslin was out of some stiff green denim, actually the same from this pair of almost jeans from awhile back. It really emphasizes how wide these are in relation to the thigh. So you don’t get a picture of those.
In terms of alterations, I had to lower the rise (I think… It brings the crotch up higher when I do that, right?) so that the crotch wasn’t 3 inches down my thighs, right in the thigh rub area. I also had to take in the waistband a good deal with some darts on the more recent make, so I should alter the waistband to be much more curved. Both of these are issues I had to address with the Tania culottes too, so I think the fit model for Megan Nielsen patterns is just so different than me, that these will be typical for me with her patterns. I’m thinking that perhaps going down a size might help, but I don’t think it would fix enough problems to be worth it to make my standard alterations again.
The fabric for this first pair is some old cotton chambray that I found in my stash. I had maybe a yard of it, and that was the perfect amount for this project. There were some sections of the fabric that were stained due to someone leaving some ancient tape on the fabric, which I tried to keep to the crotch area, where no one should see it anyway.
Can I just say the pockets are glorious? So the opening for the bottoms is the left pocket, and every review I read as I was waiting for a good time to make the pattern said that the left pocket would not be really useable. When I sewed it up, I did end up sewing more of the pocket closed than was directed on the pattern, so at the end of construction when I went to try them on, I seam ripped the pocket part until I could comfortably wriggle into them, which left me more than directed, but less than I wanted. I can definitely use the pocket, but more for big ticket items like cell phones and sunglasses, than for change and USB sticks and student id cards.
From these pictures I can see that the back crotch area is a little off, but I so rarely wear this with tucked in shirts that it probably isn’t too noticeable in real life…
I’m working on a second pair, but now that summer is (hopefully) over I am going to put that one on the back burner.
All in all this is an excellent pattern that I look forward to making again. The shorts are not what I would normally consider my style, but they’re so comfy in the “extreme heat,” meaning I hate it but its still not often 95*F, since they’re so breezy.
Next pair of shorts, I’d like to try out the flat front, since there’s a tutorial for that and that’s more my style, but we’ll see when I get the hankering for shorts again…
