#needleworkmonday :: Widening a shrunkened pair of shorts ๐
Happy #needleworkmonday everyone!
This week was a sewing week.
I have a pair of shorts (with button and velcro fastening in front) that was getting too tight. I would like to think that the shorts have shrunk ๐ .
Now, I really like this pair of shorts because it is easy to dry, very good for sports. So, what do I do? I widened it by adding a strip of fabric onto each side ๐.
Here's how I did it:
- Place the shorts flat on the floor or table, making sure that the front fastening is in the middle and the sides are nicely flattened and balanced between the front and the back of the shorts.
- When I say balanced, it is pretty much making sure the sewing lines between the front and the back of the shorts meet nicely so that when you cut, you are cutting at the center of the sides of both front and back pieces of the shorts.
- Cut both the sides.
- Here's how it looks like after both sides of the shorts have been cut. The back piece is usually wider than the front piece.
- Then, the fun part of choosing a fabric to be added to the sides of your shorts. You can choose any scrap fabric that you have, patterned or plain, anything that you fancy.
- For me, I decided to go with a supposedly quick dry T-shirt that I do not like wearing but is a good fit for this particular purpose.
- For this example, I folded that T-shirt into half so that when I cut, it will be twice the width and it will be 2 pieces.
- At the folded edge, mark the width and length to cut.
- I needed an extra 1 inch on both sides of my tight shorts. Therefore, with seam allowance, I cut a 1 inch width and about 1 inch longer than the length of the shorts. This will give me 2 pieces of 2 inches strips.
- Place the strips on both sides. You can see the extra length at the top of the strips.
- The T-shirt pieces that I cut already has hemming at the bottom which I then use as the bottom part of the shorts.
- The top part then needs to be hemmed by folding in twice.
- Pin both strips to the sides of front piece of the shorts and fold in the top part to be hemmed.
- The reason why I pin first before I hem, is to make sure that the length of the strips are correct and I get to fold in whatever that is excess at the top.
- The folded top part of the fabric strip that will be need to be hemmed.
- Hem the top part of the fabric.
- The top part that has been hemmed will look like this.
- Then, sew the sides of the strips to the front piece of the shorts. I used about a 0.7cm seam allowance.
- This is how it looks like after both the strips have been sewed to the front piece of the shorts.
- Continue to pin the other side of both the strips to the back piece of the shorts and then sew with the same seam allowance as the front piece, in my case is about 0.7cm.
- After the strips have been sewn to the front and back pieces of the shorts, it would look like this.
- If you have a serger or an overlocker machine, you can serge the loose ends of the strips. I do not have one, so I use the widest setting of the zigzag stitch on my sewing machine.
- After both sides have been zigzagged down towards the strip pieces. This also acts as a reinforcement stitch for the shorts because it was sewn onto the shorts itself.
- Cut any excess thread.
- There you have it, the added strip to the side, paired with a reinforcement zigzag stitch all the way.
- A widened shorts which I can now wear. Yippee!๐๐ปโโ๏ธ๐
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Cool way to keep the shorts and make them fit! I would never have thought of this and am appreciative of your write-up!
Thank you @jamethiel :) Yes yes, it is really nice to be able to keep them longer :)
Hi @marblely . I sincerely congratulate you for this amazing post. I'm a teacher and I know it is not the same to have the knowledge than to share your knowledge. If you are not a teacher, you should be, because your post explains every step perfectly, there's no way to not understand the wonderful work you did with the shorts and how to do it.
Thank you @leilanyarevalo :) I agree with you that having the knowledge is not the same as sharing the knowledge and thank you for your compliment ๐. I am not a teacher by profession but I like teaching and will find the opportunity to teach whenever I can :)
Excellent! I'm sure you will succeed! Good Luck!
Thank you @leilanyarevalo! :)
This idea has come at the right time in my life, since I usually climb and lose weight as if my body were a roller coaster, and that's why I have to modify my pants and sometimes I even lose them because I do not have any left. It made me laugh your comment that you prefer to think that the pants have shrunk, I also do that, I tell my mother that my clothes have shrunk. From now on, I will use the technique he has explained to enlarge the pants, so I kept his publication to guide me when I tried. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge, it will be very helpful.
Hi @iraidamatheus! Thank you for stopping by and I am happy to hear that this will be helpful :) Yah, some shorts and pants are too previous to let go and being able to keep it a little longer by adding the strips, it is so worthwhile the effort :)
Yes, the shorts have shrunk. It happens. ๐ That is a great idea not to just dispose garments that no longer fit.
That is very good of you to have adjusted it on the sides all the way up to the waist line. I usually have challenge on that part when I have to adjust the waist band. The sewing becomes bulky if I have to redo it.
Hey, you're becoming a curie regular. Congratulations! ๐
Hehe.. yes shorts shrink :D Thank you :) Yah, I whacked the waistband too :D I do try to keep garments that I like for as long as I can, even T-shirts that have holes everywhere. They are so comfy!! :)
Whoah, hahaha! I once told an acquaintance that I still have a few of my clothes in high school which is more than two decades ago and he told me to learn to let go. ๐
This is a great idea for favourite shorts and the finished item looks perfect. I was wondering if you cut through the waist-band, but it seems the original contrast fabric went into the waistband anyway? Do you have to reinforce the extra strip at the waistband?
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Thank you @shanibeer :) Yes yes I did cut through the waist band. For this material, it was fairly thin, so it wasnโt a problem at the waist band to cut and sew on the strip. The reinforcement comes from the zigzag stitch which I did on both sides of the strip. I basically sew the edges onto the strip itself and it is all the way from the waistband to the bottom.
I just found this video and at the 1-2nd minute or so, it has the exact same sewing method as what I have shared here :D
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Marblely, what a wonderful talent you have. I would have thrown them away if I can't wear them anymore, but you would be able to modify anything that you find unsatisfactory and make a great new fashion.
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Congratulations for your curie vote =).
Thank you @scrawly :) I try what I can and sometimes it works well. I do not show how many that failed and stuffed into a basket :D
@marblely, you are a genius :) you always turn these small small thing into a wonder. Now I wondering how your brain function. Need drag you do a IQ test. I love such idea especially now put on weight an a lot of pants couldn't fit hehehe.. But i do not have sewing machine. Unless I do it manually.
Hahah thank you dear @oliviackl! You can try to drag me to an IQ test but I failed when I did them back in school :D
Aaah.. yes, a sewing machine helps. You can pass them to me to sew :) I will give you discount :D
That must be an old machine, they want to test the accuracy of the machine and not test your IQ.
Aiya, I expected you say FOC since i said you were talented. hehehhe..
Haha it was just me and a few pieces of A4 size multiple choice questions. No machine involved. I was that bad :P. Haha. Its ok. I will give you a very good discount that you wouldnโt feel even a pinch :)
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The shrinking problem is well known to me... sigh... double sigh... And I must admit, that shorts are one of the clothes I never dared to wear. I feel so insecure in them (I have scars from burning on my thigh and more cellulite than skin๐... ok and I forgot the spider veins ๐ฑ)
So, back to your impeccable tutorial: wow! Are you a sewing teacher? This is so clear and well made. Just wow. As I do not have shorts, but many jeans and skirts which do not fit, I will now try to persuade you to one day write a tutorial for ill-fitting jeans. Do you have recommendations. I have so many jeans which are too wide at the back. Because of my huuuuugeeeee backside and my thick thighs I always must size up in jeans. But when the legs fit, the waistband does not (and sometimes the instep is much too long... as I am also short). I once tried to make a kind of dart at the backside, but this did not work out. Or do you know a good video for taking in jeans? The videos I have found mostly take in the waistband, but not the part beneath it.
Sorry, I highjacked your short tutorial. Feel free to completely ignore my request. Still love your post ๐
Aaah... I also have the same problems with extra lines everywhere and spider veins and I only wear shorts at home or when there is no one around at the gym or pool :D
I have the same problem too!! Jeans doesn't fit me well, usually the thighs and butt parts are too tight and the waist is too lose. But now, I found that bootleg jeans seems to fit quite ok though the waist is still kinda loose. Ya I do darts too haha. I usually dart at the sides. But after a while, the darts will come loose and it can be quite thick. I have seen videos where people use elastics instead of darts and guess what, I just found this video!
Have you watched 5-minute craft videos before? I love watching them and just realised they have one for jeans haha. In the first hack, they removed the waistband and just sew on wide elastic in replace of the waistband. I think it should work the same for loose jeans too. But I have not seen such nice elastics before though. Need to start looking for them. Seems like a pretty neat method. And at minute 1ish-2, they actually showed the exact method of what I shared here! Hehe.. Oh and the rest of the video has many other cool stuffs we can do with jeans :)
Thank you so much for your compliment ๐๐๐. NOOoooooo I am faaaaaaaaaaar from a sewing teacher. So far, what I share are very simple stuffs. Simple crochets, simple sewing and simple beading :D But I do like teaching and preparing presentation slides. I usually try to imagine what would I like to see if I were to want to learn this or ask myself what questions might be asked. It kinda helps :)
Let me know what do you think of the video and I will take into consideration your suggestion on doing something about ill-fitting jeans. But you know what, I see so many nice videos on Youtube that I feel shy sharing my amateur work sometimes :D And if I find any other nice videos, I will share with you too and you wouldn't even want to (or need to) look at my tutorial if I were to write one later :D
Sorry for answering so late. And noooo, your posts are not amateurish. I love them.
Thank you so much for searching for a video, but sadly the wide elastic hack does not work with my jeans problem. I will perhaps make 'problem' photos one day :-D
Most of the videos only show how to alter the waistband, but my problems area is also more in direction of my bum (no idea how to name this nicely in German it would be "Popo") and the gap between jeans and back is much bigger.
And with using such a big elastic, there is no possibility to use the zipper, I imagine it would not look so flat in reality as shown on the video (more over as I do not look like the woman in the video :-DDD)
And you are right, there may be already videos / tutorials for everything. But not everybody is so nice like you and we can chat about it openly (I would not do this with everyone <3)
So yes, to all your post.