Refashioned Jeans Shorts

After all the effort I went to to try and create a top just to match a pair of shorts I realised that what my wardrobe needs is some more basics.  More basic tops to go with my patterned shorts, but also more basic shorts to go with my patterned tops.

I was thinking about making a new pair of black shorts when I remembered all the pieces of jeans fabric that I still had lying around after entering the Refashions Contest on Makery.uk last year.  Why don't I use some of that to make a pair of jeans shorts.

So I went through and pulled out all the bits and pieces that I still had left over - there were two untouched pairs of jeans, two pairs of pants that had had their waistbands removed and legs cut off, plus a whole bunch of scraps.

I tried on the two untouched pairs, but they were both very large and I didn't love the colour of them enough to want to start playing around with them.

One pair of shorts that had the waistband cut off I had started trying to fit to me when I was thinking of making a jumpsuit - all they really needed was to have the waistband put back on, so I did that and tried them on - and was severely underwhelmed.  They looked like Mum Jeans.  I even tried cutting them off shorter but they still were not doing it for me.  I almost gave up at that point thinking jeans shorts just aren't for me.

But then I decided to go ahead and try on the other pair that had had the legs cut off and had the waistband removed.  These were obviously a much smaller pair of jeans with quite a bit of stretch.  They were quite a bit too small for me...however even squished into them I much preferred the way they looked to anything else I had tried on so far.  So since all the prep work was already done I decided to just try a quick fix and see if they were salvageable.

I cut the jeans about 1/4"  behind the flat fell side seams from top the bottom.  I then found a couple of scrap bits of my favourite jeans fabric that I could use to extend the jeans.

This fabric is from a light blue pair of jeans that has been embossed with gold designs.  The only pieces of this fabric that I had left were quite faded but I decided to go ahead and use them anyway.  I sewed them into the shorts down each of the cut edges and tried them on again - perfect.  They are still a but tight, but a nice "snug" tight rather than a "sausage being squished casing" tight.  Now I just needed a new waistband.  I though about taking the waistband off the the other pair of shorts that I just sewed it onto and putting that on but I wasn't enthused about the idea.  I figured that would just give me a big muffin top, so instead I used a piece of black knit rib and sewed that on, encasing a piece of 3" wide elastic in it.

Because the elastic was so wide I had to angle it in at the top so that is followed the shape of my body but that wasn't a problem it just created a bit of a V shape to the elastic, which I then used at the front of the pants to give a nice shape around the front.

I have at least discovered one thing that I like about having very little difference in size between my waist and my hips I can make elastic waist pants that don't need much if any gathering to fit so they end up looking like real pants but are much more comfortable....got to have a silver lining for everything!

 The final piece of the puzzle was how to finish off the legs.  I had to cut them pretty short as a lot of the leg material had already been used for other projects, I thought about leaving the cut edge free to fray, but decided in the end that I liked the look of them hemmed better so just did a quick serge about the bottom to stop and fraying and turned he edge under about 3/8".

I love the way these shorts turned out.  For a quick mornings work they're a great addition to my wardrobe.