Shorts from T-shirts

Saw this on Pinterest and had to give it a try...One t-shirt, a little extra fabric and a string for the waistband harvested from another pair of drawstring pants that died.

 Taking two shirts..

 Cut the sleeves off the darker.  Set them aside.  We will use them in a minute.

 Trim off the top of shoulders and neckline across. 

 Using a flexible ruler measure the armhole.  I need an inside leg gusset because the armhole is not big enough for my crotch measurement (front waist to back waist between the legs)

 Here's my measurements for the top of the gusset - 38 cm plus some for seam allowances

 Measure Body at just above underarm and compare to upper thigh measurement.  We want it to be loose at the top of the thigh, but not baggy.

 Here's how I came up with how deep my triangle (gusset) needed to be.

 Seam rip the bottom edge of the sleeves.  I needed to do this so that my triangle was long enough.  You may not have to do this.

 Here's my drafted gusset

 And here's the cut gusset.

 Now for the waistband.  I'm going to make it have two layers that the string runs through.  Take your waist measurement minus 5 cm

 I cut one 10 cm and the other 12

 Here are the parts...the shirt (cut for the legs) the gusset for the crotch and the waistband pieces.

 Sew the gusset to one side of the underarm, right sides together.

 Starting at bottom of the leg sew up the side and gusset to form one leg. 

 Careful at the gusset to not get too much fabric in the way of the seam

 Repeat for the other leg.

 Turn one leg inside out.  Place the right side out leg inside the inside out leg so that right sides are together.

 Sew crotch seam.

 Here we are so far...

 Sew side seams on both waistbands.

They should look like this.

 Fold over with seam on inside.

 Take the shorter and mark buttonhole placement.  This is above the seam allowance (where it will be sewn to the legs of the shorts).

 Using the buttonhole attachment or the buttonhole stitch variations, put two buttonholes on the smaller waistband.

 Looks like this... open them up

 Pin the waistbands together

 With the shorter one on the inside pin to legs.  Center the two buttonholes in front ;-)

 Sew on waistband.

 

 Press. Then stitch down waistband close to seam

 Above buttonholes run another line of stitching to make the drawstring area between the two waistband layers

 Run the drawstring.  I used a large safety pin to guide it through the tunnel.

 Here we are... done at the work station.

There we are...New comfy shorts for around the house and summer sleepwear.