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Hello!
Welcome back to another Make Thrift Buy, the show where YOU send in items you’ve seen
on the internet, that are either mass-produced suuuuper expensive – or just plain weird
– and then I do my best to recreate them.
A lot of you really liked me taking on the… problematic…
WISH app last episode, so today I’m back to tackle another wish item.
POW POW POW!
SO I had a bunch of that silky material left over from making the top from the previous
episode, and if you recall I wanted to make shorts out of that leftover material – and
the shorts I wanted to make are also an item from WISH , which is listed on the app as
a 2-piece set – sorry, not 2-piece set, “Sexy Women Pajamas Mini Tank Crop Tops
Shorts Set Sleepwear Nightmare”.
Nightmare?
Nightwear.
It is a nightmare.
Yeah that.
ANYWAY – it sells for just $6.
Worryingly cheap.
Especially because…
I’ve made shorts before.
They’re not the easiest things to make.
And this two piece set being sold for only $6 worries me a lot because it means that the person
or people making them are getting paid next-to-nothing, when you also factor in materials cost, the
cost of transporting those materials, and that the company, obviously, will be making
a profit as well.
[sigh]
SO let’s try make this one for ourselves.
Let’s begin!
Alright, so quickly recapping LAST episode, I got this Black Slip from a thrift store
and turned it into a top.
Last episode I said that it cost $2 – buuuut I accidentally got that wrong – it was only
50 cents, which I only remembered when I re-watched the video, where I bought it.
And I didn’t wanna get any angry tweets if anyone DID happen to notice, so I’m mentioning
that here…
OKAY!
So I wanted to make use of this bottom part of the slip by turning into SHORTS!
To turn this into shorts, the basic pattern that I’m going to be using is one that I’ve
already made, when I made shorts for another video.
And to see how I made that pattern, let’s go back to the past, shall we?
[harp noise, indicating the passage of time]
“To make this pattern, I copied a pair of high-waisted shorts that I already owned,
and that fit me really well.
To copy these shorts, I folded the shorts in half at the front, traced around them onto
paper with about an inch seam allowance all around, folded them in half the other way,
and then traced around the back in the same way, then cut these pieces out.
This gave me a front and a back piece.
You’ll notice that the back piece has a longer bit HERE which gives you more room
for your BUTT.”
[harp noise, indicating the passage of time] Annika: [mimics the harp]
(Yes I’m a dork.)
BACK TO THE PRESENT.
So I pulled those pattern pieces out again, and I’m not going to add any pockets because
I definitely don’t have enough fabric, so the pocket pieces are going away.
So I laid out the front and back pattern pieces, just to get an idea of how much fabric the
shorts will require.
Hmmm – and I wasn't super sure if I was going to have enough fabric at this point.
Because this fabric used to be the bottom of a dress, it’s in a loop, so I cut it
open down one of the seams, so I could open it into ONE layer, to get a better idea of
how much fabric I had.
I then traced my OLD pattern out again onto another piece of paper, but I modified it
a little – I did this because my last shorts were FITTED and required a zipper, whereas
I don’t want a zipper for this pair, I’ll be doing an elastic waistband instead – and
because of that, I’m going to have to make the waist at least big enough for the shorts
to go up over my hips, because if I don’t I won’t be able to get the shorts on! (and
I’ve done this before).
So, I did increase the waist about an inch (which is 2.5 cm) on both the front and back,
and I also “squared” up the edges of the pattern HERE, turning the outside corner into
a 90-degree-angle, so that I would use my fabric more efficiently… ‘coz as you saw
before – there’s not a lot of it!
And then…
I played some tetris with my pattern pieces and the fabric.
It was then that I realised, if I used THIS pattern as it is, I was only going to get
about three-quarters of a pair of shorts from out of the fabric.
Butttttt… then I remembered that the old pattern had included an extra 1 inch allowance
for darts – so I could get rid of that, because the new shorts aren’t going to be
fitted, AND I also realised that my satiny-fabric is… quite stretchy.
Which also means I can reduce the width.
Because of that, I was able to to reduce the sides of both the front and back patterns
by about 1 and a half inches each, which I did by folding them inwards, 1 and a half
inch, like this.
And now...THE PATTERN PIECES FIT!
HALLELUJAH!
Because I've done this the shorts aren’t going to be as “flowy” as I would have
liked, but fingers crossed this will still work – the waist is still about 5 inches
bigger than my natural waistline measurement (which is fine because I'm going to be elasticating
the waist - I want it to be bigger).
But because it’s stretchy I should be able to pull them over my hips.
Wish me luck.
So using these pattern pieces, first I cut out my back pieces, by placing the pattern
on the fabric’s fold, which I did to minimise fabric waste…and I cut around it.
Here's my back pieces.
I then cut this in half straight down the middle to give me two back pieces.
I then also tried to do the same thing with the front pieces BUT…
I ran out of fabric.
I just didn’t quite have enough to cover the crotch piece.
But – do you see all this extra fabric up here?
It’s not going to be as pretty, but I’m going to use that, and attach it on to the
fabric where I need it.
So I cut off that extra fabric… and sewed it on down here.
In order to get a nice, clean seam, I pinned it on to the main fabric right-sides-together,
and I sewed it on like THIS.
Now - this fabric, being satin, was also a bit of a nightmare to work with.
Satins and silky fabrics are difficult, and when I sewed it using no stabaliser of any
kind, the stitching looked preeeetty janky.
So to fix this – and I ended up doing this for ALL seams in this project, every single
edge that I was going to sew on – I placed a piece of one-sided fusible interfacing down
the edge that I'm going to be sewing on, and then I put a heat-proof cloth over the top,
(mine is silk organza, but you could use an old t-shirt) and then I ironed it down, sticking
the interfacing to the edge of the fabric.
And when I sewed this together it gave me MUCH nicer looking stitches and seams.
ALRIGHT – I was then able to use this to cut out 2 of my front pieces, again I cut
it out with the edge placed on the fold, in order to save fabric.
And I also cut my front and back pieces straight down the middle to give myself 2 symmetrical
front pieces.
To construct the shorts, first I needed to sew each front piece right-sides together,
and each back piece right-sides together, both all the way down this curvy edge.
Once I’d done that, I cut away the extra seam allowance so that the interfacing wouldn’t
make the seams all stiff-feeling.
And then I also pressed these seams with my iron.
….. [sigh] and at this point I remembered that I had interfacing that I should've been
using instead of the white one, because it not only matched the colour of my fabric but
it was a bit stretchy too.
So I should have been using right from the start – the white interfacing, although
you're not going to be able to see it on the outside of the finished shorts, it won't look
so great from the inside…
Here’s a tip from me.
If you’re following this tutorial yourself please use interfacing that matches the colour
AND stretchiness of your fabric.
Do as I say, not as I do.
ANYWAY, I’ll be using this black by interfacing on all the edges and seams, from here on out.
So the next step is to place the front and back pieces right-sides together, on top of
each other.
And there’s not really any better way to say this…
I “spread the crotch” of the front piece out like this.
And I placed the back piece on top of it, right-sides together...spread out the crotch
as well. [giggles]
Basically I matched up the front and back "crotches".
I held the two pieces of fabric together with these sewing clips, and then I sewed the crotch
together like this.
The next step is to sew the front and back pieces together at the sides.
So, I matched up the sides, of the front and back piece – I’m adding interfacing first,
just like I have for all the seams before sewing – and then I sewed them together
like this.
By the way, I am using these clips rather than pins, because I'm working with a delicate
fabric and didn't want to poke a lot of holes through it.
Now that they’re basically shorts, it’s time for the moment of truth, do they fit
over my hips?
YES!
Thank goodness I was able to easily get them on.
Thank you, fabric, for having some stretch.
So the next step is going to be adding elastic around the waist, to hold them up.
First I needed to make a casing for the elastic.
So, after applying some more interfacing to the top of the shorts, and with the shorts
inside-out, I folded the top of the shorts down just a bit more than the width of the
elastic that I’m going to be using.
And then I sewed almost all the way around the casing at the top of the shorts, leaving
a small gap to insert the elastic through.
So...while I was sewing this my sewing machine was being very naughty because my fabric was
both slippery and stretchy and it didn’t enjoy this at all, even with the interfacing
on the fabric, but it started behaving when I switched to using a walking foot attachment,
and by going around the casing FIRST with a straight stitch, and following it up with
a zig zag stitch.
Then I measured this piece of elastic around my waist, around where the shorts are going
to sit, and I pulled the elastic a little bit tight so the shorts will stay up, but
not too tight that it’s uncomfortable, and then chopped it to this length – adding
half an inch to the length before cutting, so that I can sew the elastic into a loop
after it’s inserted into the shorts.
Putting a safety pin into one end of the elastic, I pushed it through the gap in the casing,
around the waist, and I threaded the elastic all the way around the casing til it came
out the other end, and I removed the safety pin, and sewed the ends of the elastic closed.
And finally, I sewed over that little gap in the casing.
And with that, I am done!
SO – how did I go?
[cute old-timey music]
I have to be honest, I didn’t expect these to look as nice as they do, after I had to
make those pattern pieces… a lot smaller to fit on the fabric.
So, I’m really happy with how they turned out!
They’re absolutely perfect to wear as… actually quite luxurious-looking summer pyjamas.
My conclusion is:
[scissor sound, zipping sound]
Now, this is definitely a harder project than the previous episode, the top, you'll need
some sewing experience to try this, buuuut, shorts are really not that difficult to make.
And if you’re a beginning sewer, or struggling with shorts, I would recommend using the FREE
downloadable Madeleine bloomers by Colette – it’ll help you wrap your head around
shorts-and-pants-making and help you feel more confident about trying out your own patterns!
So in the end, I was able to make both this silky top and shorts out of just one thrifted
slip, and this was the total fabric waste at the end:
Pretty good, right?
And these scraps will be going right into my scrap box to be used in other projects.
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