Vintage Simplicity 9158: Shorts!

I do not own a single pair of shorts.

Okay. Not true. I actually own several pairs of shorts, that I bought several summers ago after I lost 65 pounds. (Yes I did! Read about it here and here). But I can’t fit into them anymore. 🙁 I’m working on it! I will get back to goal, you can count on it! Meantime, I don’t have any shorts and the weather is getting warm, my friends. It is now officially Shorts Season!

I have declared it shorts season in my sewing room, too.

I paid .25 cents for this (OMG Christie Brinkley!) pattern at the thrift store. I’ve actually been collecting quite a few patterns at the thrift store for .25 cents each. I’ll show you sometime 🙂

This pattern was published in 1989, and when I googled it, I found it being sold on etsy and ebay as “vintage.” Vintage? Really? …sigh. In 1989 I had a 4 year old, so I guess he is vintage, too!

I also found a table cloth for $1.00. (Yup! ONE DOLLAR) that looked like it would be good to wear. (Really, Nita? A tablecloth?) shhhhhh…don’t tell my son! He would die if he knew his mother was shopping in the linen closet at the thrift store!

Here goes nothing!

I won these Frixion pens in a door prize at Quilt Guild yesterday. Cool! They made marking the Big Dots and MMMs so easy!

Add one long-distance phone call for moral support:

And 6 hours later – yes, I said six hours later … (NOW can you tell I’m a total neophyte seamstress?)

Totally missed matching the plaids up on the front.

But I did a marvelous job of matching the plaids on the side seams! (actually, it didn’t occur to me that I should match the plaids until after I got to the side seams. Doh!)

This table cloth fabric ravels really bad, so I used the over-lock stitch on my Janome to finish the seams. I’ve never used that stitch before. It’s really cool!

Here’s a shot from the back. And hey! I managed to hem both legs the same length!

I put a button on the front so I know which way to put them on for decoration.

The pockets are…well…okay, let me just say that when you discover that the waist band is going to tuck in under your arm pits, you should probably take the pockets out and move them down instead of whacking the top of the waistband off (pockets and all) and folding the whole lot over to make the casing. Just sayin’…

Things I learned:

1. Patterns are your friend. But it’s probably a good idea to hold them up to yourself to see if the waistband is going to be 10 inches to long or miles too short before you cut.
2. My sewing machine has an interlock stitch 🙂
3. tablecloths make nice clothes to garden in.
4. Sewing is fun!

Now…click your heels together three times and repeat after me: “sewing is not scarey.” 

Maybe I’ll feel brave enough to tackle a dress soon!