Burda Style Shorts With Tie Waist Detail

For my latest make…these Burda Style shorts, I did some serious stash busting and sewing up of leftovers. They were a spur of the moment sewing project that I really enjoyed making (the best sort of makes eh?). It all actually kicked off on Saturday night when I had been prepping a PDF for my next project and thinking about how lovely our weather in the UK is at the moment. I suddenly felt the need for some shorts in my wardrobe to wear on a holiday that we are due to take soon.

We will be holidaying in the UK so although it’s sunny at the moment we may end up needing brollies not shorts so I didn’t want to go spending on new fabric when I was sure to have something that I could use already in my stash. A good rummage and I quickly unearthed some leftover coral ponte and a scrap of printed cotton lawn. The original makes for both fabrics are here and here.  Oh, incidentally, the ponte came from Clothspot and the cotton lawn came from Cotton Reel Studio  , both sold out now, unfortunately. Anyway, there really wasn’t a great deal of the ponte knit and it was a decidedly odd shape, so I crossed my fingers whilst I started to search for a suitable pattern in my Burda Style magazines. This is the style I went for from June of 2016 issue:

Scrapbusting and Tetris

It didn’t take me too long to trace off and I used the 36 size lines grading to bigger at the waist. I had a wide leg trouser pattern that I previously adapted and half self-drafted myself and when I tried the size of those against the Burda pattern I was pleasantly surprised at how close the drafting was to my own pattern shape…Yay! All I had to do was re-draw the back lower crotch curve a bit to accommodate my low behind. The tricky bit came when I had to play pattern Tetris to cut out. The back of my shorts had to be seamed down the middle of each piece…I couldn’t make the front pleats quite as wide as the pattern….the inside of the waistband and the waist ties were cut from the cotton fabric…and finally, I cut one side of each pocket and the zip underlay in cotton too. But I did it, yay! There were literally scraps left. I think I can safely say that this project fits in with two challenges. Firstly there is  #sewingleftovers hosted by Shauni of The Magnificent Thread.  and secondly, this is my contribution Burda make for Hila’s (Saturday Night Stitch) Burdachallenge2018, for the month of May.

Reclaimed SewJo

I got on with sewing up my shorts really quickly and I really enjoyed it! I took advantage of the fact that both my hubby and son were stricken down by colds and so no outings were planned therefore Sunday became Sewday! I’d lost a bit of my sewjo in the last few days but this fun project bought it all back.  I didn’t even bother trying the shorts on for fit as I was sewing them because I was confident of them being ok.

For most of the Ponte seams I used my walking foot and a Schmetz Jersey needle size 70 which stitched like a dream and when I finally got around to trying the shorts of all I had to do to tweak the fit was to release the front pleats a little as there was a slight pull across my lower tummy, and I shortened the length of the waist ties which were way too long.

The instructions were all just written, as is usual with Burda Style, with no pictures… some careful reading and taking it slowly meant that the fold detail where the ties thread through was fairly straightforward and I liked how it all went together.

I went slightly off track and did my own thing a bit with the in-seam pockets but they worked out ok in the end. I love the effect of the contrast fabrics and how nice it looks on the inside Here are some detail photos for you:

The finished silhouette is more of a culotte shorts style. I’m more used to a closer fit, but I rather like the easiness and comfort factor these provide. And when I say comfy, I mean realllllyyyyy comfy! That’s a knit for you! Tell, me…do you wear shorts much? They aren’t something I wear that often. I tend to wear a really loose dress if we have warm weather in the UK but I’m definitely more inclined to wear them at the seaside. Would love to hear your thoughts.

So that’s me all sorted and holiday ready, but I’m already thinking about my next project and the one after that…and the one after that…..

Till next time. Thanks for reading xx

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