Woodland Sailor Shorts

I made these CUTE shorts for Amélie, back at the end of November. The fabric is Woodland Fairies by Natalie Lymer of Cinderberry Stitches for Lecien. I have had this in my stash for a little while, waiting for the right project to come along and here it is. The pattern I used is the Sailor Shorts pattern from the Peek-a-boo Pattern Shop on Etsy. If you've never shopped on Etsy before, you can use this link to get $5 off your first purchase. In the interests of full disclosure, if two people use this link, I also get $10 off my next Etsy purchase. You must be new to Etsy for the link to work.

If you are making these shorts, I would recommend going up a size to usual, especially if your child is still in nappies. Amélie is not wearing a nappy in these pictures, but when she was wearing one, it poked out the top at the back. I am not sure if the "T" in the sizes actually means they are sized for a nappy or not, but Amélie still wears mostly size two pants, and these were very snug with the nappy on.


I feel that the construction of the band across the front (the short waistband) was more complicated than necessary. The seam allowances are all encased, which means there is more bulk than necessary in those edges that are just going to be covered with bias binding anyway. A pattern piece with the curved edges and button holes marked would be preferable to instructions where you cut a rectangle and add the curves yourself. If the top edge was open, rather than folded, there would be no messing about with trying to catch an edge in your topstitching. Much quicker, less bulk and no curve clipping (not that there is any mention of curve-clipping!). I would also suggest some interfacing be applied to this waistband, especially since there are button-holes. In addition to this, some dots to indicate the position of buttons on the front would be nice as would notches in some of the seams.


Having said all of that, these really are a cute little pair of shorts and it was still a pretty good pattern with great instructions and clear photos at each step. I would still recommend this pattern and I am sure to buy more from this designer. I did an extra little alteration myself, by adding adjustable buttonhole elastic to the waistband. Instead of stopping at the side seams (the elastic in the pattern only goes across the back), I put some buttonholes in the ends of the long waistband (hidden behind the front, short waistband) and threaded the elastic right the way around, making the shorts adjustable. I did this mainly because I was making size three and thought they might need to be adjusted tighter for Amélie.

If you want to make these shorts, and you haven't used bias binding before, the picot edged bias is really easy to use. The picot edge keeps that fold in the middle, so catching the edge of the bias on the back when you topstitch on the front is far easier than with regular bias, particularly around the curves.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention the t-shirt she is wearing! It was a $2 plain t-shirt from K-Mart that I appliquéd with a heart shape from my scraps using a little Steam a Seam, some cut away on the back and a machine blanket stitch. It only took me a few minutes and now she has a cute t-shirt to match her shorts.


I used about half a metre of fabric to make these shorts, so two fat quarters of fabric, SYST13 Running totals: in = 140, out = 270, total = -130

Have you ever purchased a pattern from Etsy? Any you recommend?