Pattern Alteration

My oldest is leaving for Chicago tomorrow. She's going to spend a week with a cousin, her grandmother, and an aunt and uncle. She's thrilled beyond belief and has spent the summer earning money to go.

I've done some prep work myself. I decided she needed another pair of shorts. Last summer I made her a pair out of this pattern:

The walking shorts length with the little fake pocket tabs and the cuff. She likes them well enough but there were a few things she wanted done differently with the next pair. Like pockets. Do you see any pockets on those shorts? yeah, me neither. There are the patch pockets on the capris, but when was the last time you saw a teen aged girl in shorts with patch pockets like that on front? The shorts needed a scoop pocket.

Like this:

Cute huh? well that cute took me over an hour to put together. First I had to dig up a pattern with a scoop pocket because I had no idea how to make one. Then that pattern was to big for my girl plus the scoop was more of a slant, more old lady slacks than cute girl shorts, which makes all kinds of sense because that's the pattern with the pockets was for grown up slacks. So I traced the actual front piece of the shorts to create the pocket and yolk, then I traced the scoop off a pair of jeans I liked the scoop shape on, then I made the front pocket piece then I cut the scoop out of the actual front leg piece, then I put the whole thing together. It took some mental calisthenics to make it work. But I'm happy with the results.

Then after all that I decided the shorts needed some back pockets too. I thought to myself welted pockets would be cute, then I thought, "Self, how does one make a welted pocket?" This is when Google comes in handy. I learned you make one like this.

So I made two.

Then I added darts in back to stop gapposis.

Then she decided she didn't want cuffs so I had to cut them shorter.

Then we thought the legs would be cuter if they were skinnier. But it couldn't just come in more all the way around. Nope. I had to take apart the leg and pull in more off the back to keep the leg from pulling weird. Then I had to resew the right leg about four times to get it right. Then I had to try and make the left leg match. That only took twice.

Then I hemmed them with a cute 2 1/2" hem. I love the deep hem with a straight stitch. It just adds a nice little detail to the leg.

Then I discovered I had screwed something up with the waistband or the fly or something and there was no overlap at the waistband. Since I had ripped out about fifty things already, I said screw it, and made a little tab to be my overlap for me. Then I sewed it to the wrong side and had to rip it off and resew it anyway.

whew.

Next time I'm going to take the 20 minute drive to the fabric store and get the pattern we want in the first place. ;)

It was a pretty good lesson about working with patterns and changing silhouettes and adding pockets, though.