08 October, 2012

DIY Lace Trimmed Shorts

Good evening y'all!

While visiting Seattle last month, my best friend Elyse and I worked on a sewing project and I wanted to show you what we did!



Many people were pinning and re-pinning these cute lace trimmed shorts and I wanted one so bad! The only problem: I didn't have a sewing machine. But I knew that there was one at Elyse's house, and she was more than happy to help me with this project. We had a blast hanging out, talking and doing crafty things. She helped me with the shorts and also she crocheted these super cute headbands that I will blog about it another post! She is so talented, she could probably make good money selling her stuff. Furthermore, she is so generous for letting me use some of her lace from her stash, the sewing machine and also helping me sew it. I was quite incompetent at the sewing machine (something I plan on fixing) so she had to step in :)

So we started by going to Goodwill to find a pair of jeans to cut up. That day I left Goodwill with an awesome pair of boot cut Banana Republic jeans that fit me perfectly all around. They were even hemmed up to the perfect length for me. After going through Elyse's lace collection together, and choosing potential lace pieces, we agreed to meet another day to sew.

The next meeting, I really didn't have the heart to cut up such a perfect pair of denim. The funny thing was that Elyse mentioned on the first trip to Goodwill, "What if you liked these so much you didn't want to cut them up?" So we made a second trip to Goodwill and felt pretty hopeless when I saw a pair of destroyed Hollister jeans hanging on the discard rack. Those also fit me perfectly and I didn't hesitate cutting off the legs because the knees were too destroyed to my liking.What a lucky day!


Step 1: The lace I decided to use is pictured in the top right. Notice the cute piggies embroidered on it? I was so excited when I noticed it way late. Think about it: who puts piggies on lace trim? So cute! Anyway, the bottom right image shows the Hollister denim that I decided to use. We started by marking the line where we wanted to cut on the leg. I chose it to be just above mid-thigh because I am not a big fan of short-shorts.

Step 2: We turned the shorts inside out and sewed up the hem about half an inch. Elyse started the hem and I tried to finish. The key word here is "try" because I failed miserably. I couldn't keep the hemline straight, so Elyse took over. Isn't she so kind? She actually ended up sewing the rest of it. She doubled sewed the hem to ensure that it was sturdy since this is denim.


Step 3: The finishing step was to sew on the lace along the inside of the denim. We made sure the lace would overlap on the inner thigh so that the lace would be uninterrupted around the rest of the leg.


The finishing of finishing step is to try on the shorts and see how it looks.  And I think it looks pretty cute, don't you? They are so cute I  wore these shorts the rest of that day :)

We went to her backyard to take some pictures for this blog. She also let me use her Buddy scooter for the pictures and they turned out great! Thanks Elyse for helping every step of the way. I had such an amazing time with you ^_^

I hope you enjoyed this post about the process of making these shorts. If you have questions about this process or would like to make a pair for yourself, please let me know! I I would love to see what you came up with. Until next time!

<3 Kara


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