Bound Shorts Pattern

Bound shorts with an elastic waistband are a great summer project. You can make them for lounge wear, and they're really easy to adjust size-wise to make them fit how ever it is that you want your shorts to fit. So this is what they look like when they're finished. This is the small size. The pattern that I'm providing with this tutorial comes in three sizes, a small, medium, and large, and I'll show how these pieces go together in just a second, but you can see that these are the hip measurements, and that's the only real measurement that you need for this pattern, because that is the widest part.

If it fits your hips, it's most likely gonna fit your legs. And then it's an elastic waistband. So you can adjust how tight or how loose you want your elastic waistband to fit. So really the hip is the only measurement that you need. If you fit within 33 to 37, you're a small.

38 to 43, medium. And so on, all the way up to large. If you are within these measurements, so say you're somewhere right above small, but under medium, or not quite into either one of those, you can do what's called grading your pattern. And you would come in here and you would draw a line, a new line, that you're gonna follow on your pattern that's between small and medium. You can do the same thing between medium and large.

You can even do the same thing under small to make it extra-small or above large, to make it extra-large. Now, each of the pieces, there's only two pieces, a front and a back, it's a pretty easy pattern, has four pages. So when you print them off, they are numbered, pages one, two, three, and four, and they simply lay together. So there are notches. There are lines with letters that you need to line up.

So you can see here, I have a line and a B. A line and a B. So I know that those two need to align. Scooch these up, so I have room for the pages three and four. But it's the same thing.

There are letters and lines on these four pages as well. So they all fit together nicely. So again, four pages for the front, four pages for the back. You're going to download this, print them out, and tape them together. And then cut out whatever size you are, again, small, medium, or large, or you can grade between the sizes to get your perfect fit.

Once you have cut out your pieces from your patterns, then of course you need to cut out your pieces from fabric. So the amount of fabric you're gonna need is going to depend on the size of shorts you're making, anywhere between a yard to a yard and half should be enough, but you're gonna cut two front pieces and two back pieces. So here are my two front pieces, and here are my two back pieces. So they look very, very similar. This section here is really the only difference between the front piece and the back piece.

I'm gonna show you the finished shorts real quick again, because some of the features of these shorts is that they are bound, which means we're not trying to do any kind of hem, double-fold hem. We are binding this edge, and we are gonna bind it with bias tape, which I'll show you how to make. We, again, have the elastic waistband, which makes it very, very easy to adjust how these shorts fit on you. And then all of the seams are constructed using a French seam construction method, which is how I'm gonna show you how to make this. And that means that there are no seam allowances that you need to finish.

Nothing you need to worry about, doing a zigzag stitch, overcast, anything like that. Everything will be finished and encased, again, using this French seam construction. So the first thing you're gonna do is you're going to take and you're gonna sew together your front pieces, and you're gonna sew together your back pieces along this curved seam. Now, when you're doing a French seam, the one thing that is different is that rather than putting your pieces' right sides together and stitching, we're gonna start with them wrong sides together. So my fabric is very, very similar on the right and the wrong side.

The only thing that makes it a little bit easier for me to tell, I'm not even sure if you can pick it up on the camera, but the dotted lines here on my blue is a little more pronounced on the right side than the wrong. So I know that I have my pieces right now, wrong sides together. And again, I'm going to stitch this curved seam. I'm going to stitch it using a one-quarter-inch seam allowance. And I'm not really worried about back-stitching at the beginning or end, because we're going to be stitching it a second time in a minute anyway, so that isn't necessary.

So, I gonna come in here, and I'm gonna stitch... right along this curved seam. Again, I have my fabric wrong sides together. Coming right around. And I can stitch right off of the edge.

I'm gonna do the exact same thing with my front pieces. So those were my back pieces. Here are my front pieces. Again, I have them wrong sides together, and see, I have my two pieces wrong sides together. And now I'm gonna come in here, and I'm gonna stitch, again, this same curved seam, one-quarter-inch seam allowance, and I'm not worried about that backstitch at the beginning or end.

Right around that curve. Right, like so. Take it off, and clip the threads. Now, with both of them stitched, you'd be able to open them up. You can already see that we have a pair of shorts forming.

So, with our pieces, again they're wrong sides together, we stitched them using that one-quarter-inch seam allowance. Now, we want to come in with either a pair of scissors, rotary cutter, and you want to trim that seam allowance down to about an eighth of an inch. So it doesn't have to be perfect. You just want to be trimming off about half of the seam allowance that you just stitched. As you can see, I've trimmed away about half on the back.

I'm gonna bring in the front, and I'm gonna do the exact same thing. And I'm gonna trim away about a half of that seam allowance. Right, like so. Now I'm gonna take my pieces, and I'm going to refold them to where they are right sides together. So I have this seam that I just stitched.

I want to make sure that that seam is right along the edge. So I'm gonna use my fingers to sort of press that fabric down. If your fabric isn't taking well to just being pressed with your fingers, you can take it over and iron it at this step, so it lays nice and flat. But all I'm doing is refolding my pieces of fabric so that they are now right sides together. So I'm gonna go ahead and put a couple pins in just to hold my fabric, so I have that seam right on the edge, and I don't want it to move on me.

I'm just gonna put a couple of pins in. Right, like so. And I'm gonna do the exact same thing with my back piece. So again, I have already stitched in, we have already trimmed that seam by one half. Now I'm going to refold it, or realign everything so that these pieces are now right sides together.

Kind of shake it out a little bit. Lay it flat. Use your fingers or fingernails to fold it, again, making sure that seam is right along the edge. You don't have any extra fabric sort of hiding down in that seam. Make sure it's pressed right out to the edge.

And again, I'm just putting a couple of pins in to hold it so I can then take it over and stitch. So. Use your fingernail if you need to, to kind of roll that seam out. A couple more in. And now I'm gonna take it over to my machine.

And I'm again, going to stitch using that one-quarter-inch seam allowance. I'm swapping out my presser foot really quick, just because I'm actually putting a quarter-inch foot on my machine, which just makes it a little bit easier to be able to see that quarter-inch line, 'cause I want to make sure that I'm doing a nice straight stitch. The other foot made it a little hard to see. So now that I have this pinned and folded, right sides together, I'm gonna come in here, and I'm gonna, again, going to stitch one quarter inch away from the edge. And I'm still not worried about a backstitch at the beginning or the end.

You can, if you want to. And if your machine does an automatic backtack, you can absolutely let it continue to do that. But because we still have more seams that are gonna be overlapping in the construction of our shorts, nothing is sort of lessened of the integrity of the stitching by not doing a backstitch here. Come right around... and take this off the machine.

Clip the threads. And now this is the seam, the seam allowance, on the inside of our shorts. So it's now perfectly finished. You have no raw edges anywhere. And when you open it up, you still have a very nice seam on the outside.

So everything is nice and finished. We're gonna go ahead and stitch and do the exact same thing with the front. We already have it pinned and ready to go. Again, we're stitching this on that one-quarter-inch seam allowance. And this will, again, encase that, those seam allowances on the inside of our shorts.

So we have no raw edges. Everything is gonna be nice and finished. No raveling. Nothing we have to deal with on the inside of our shorts. Go ahead and take this off.

Clip the threads. Again, this is now the seam on the inside of the shorts. And if you open it up, you have a very nice seam on the outside. So this is the front of the shorts. This is the right side.

We have the back of the shorts. This is the right side. We want to put the front and back together, right sides together. And we're doing this lower inner-leg seam, so it should be a very short seam here, 'cause we're working with shorts, but we went to, again, do the same method of construction. So I know I just said right-sides together, but we need to start with wrong sides together first.

So I'm just gonna bring this one around to this side. You want to nest your seams, meaning I have one seam allowance going in one direction, one going the other. Once I've done that, I can put a pin in to hold them. Once I've got my center pin in to hold them, you could put additional pins along the remaining edges if you wanted to. But since it is shorts, so it's a pretty short seam.

I'm just gonna hold this and then take it over. Again, stitching on a one-quarter-inch seam allowance, not worried about back-stitching at the beginning or end. Go ahead and stitch up to, as close to that pin as you want to get, and then take it out. Stitch right off the edge. Can take this off of the machine.

And now we have to do the exact same thing where we trim the seam allowance down, so we've put them right sides together. Now, when you're doing a French seam, it's something where you can use any sort of width of seam allowance that you want. And you essentially cut it in half. So I'm really constructing this using half-inch seam allowances, 'cause I'm doing a quarter once, a quarter again. That gives me the half-inch seam allowance.

If you want to use this technique of French seam construction on any other project in the future, and maybe it has a different seam allowance, maybe it's five-eighths of an inch or something like that, you can still just divide it into two measurements. You could do three-eighths first and then a quarter. So a French seam construction can be done really at any width. I'm gonna do the same thing where I trim away half. Okay, like so.

Once I've done that, I'm now gonna fold them so they are right sides together. Right, like so. Using my fingers to kind of roll those seam allowances, so it's the right along the edge. Put in a pin. And now I'm gonna take this over and stitch, again, quarter-inch seam allowance.

Right, like so. Make sure your seam allowances that you've already finished are laying one in one direction, one in the other, so they're just laying flat as you stitch over them. And you can stitch right off the edge. And now this is the inside of our shorts. So this is the inside inner seam.

We have the back seam, the front seam. Everything is nice and finished, encased. You have nothing to ravel, no raw edges to finish. And now, when I fold them, so they are... Lay them out so they are wrong sides together.

You can see that we actually have a pair of shorts forming here. So we have our front. Here's our back. Here are our leg openings, and we are almost done with a pair of shorts. So all we have to do now is bind the edges.

So what's gonna happen with these shorts is we're going to bind the edges, then simply overlap the back over the front and stitch them. So to show that on our finished short again. You can see, again, have our front and back. We have the seams that we've already stitched. The inner-leg seam.

Now we need to add this binding to it. You can see where we're just going to overlap the back with the front, and that's gonna create the side seam of our shorts. So to bind these, we do want to make bias tape. So if you're making a binding, you have two different options, and that is a straight of grain tape and a bias tape. Bias tape means there's a little bit of stretch to the fabric.

And even though these may be sort of a baggier type of short, we still want there to be some stretch or give when you're walking, just so you're not pulling anything. So I have made a bunch of bias tape ahead of time, made it in a nice little roll. So I'll have, along with this pattern, an estimated amount of bias tape that you will need to go with any of the three sizes that I've provided with this pattern, so you'll know how many inches of bias tape you need to make. But you need to cut strips of fabric that are two and a quarter inches that are on the bias. So if you don't know what the bias is of fabric, here's my little square or rectangle of scrap fabric to show you.

But there are two straight of grain on a fabric, one that goes perfectly straight up and down, one that goes horizontal, and they are perpendicular to one another. So on this rectangle of fabric, I have straight of grain going this way, and I have straight of grain going this way. 45 degrees between the two is what is known as the bias. And that is where there's the most stretch on the fabric. So if I pull on this fabric here, there's a little bit of give.

Pull on it this way, there's pretty much no give at all. But if I pull at a 45 degree angle, you can see how much my fabric stretches. So we want to make use of that stretch. And again, cut our strips of fabric on that 45-degree angle, so they have some nice stretch to them. So I'm gonna show that here on this really tiny piece of fabric.

But pretend this is your much larger bolt of fabric that you're working with. To cut a strip on the bias, to find that 45, you can use a square ruler like this. You can use a longer ruler like this one here. But they all have lines on them at different angles. So here's the 45 line here.

And all you would do is take and line up that 45-degree line along the straight edge of your fabric. And then you're gonna cut along the edge of the ruler. We've now cut on the bias. That's a perfect 45. And now if I'm measuring a two-and-a-quarter-inch strip, I'm now measuring it from this angled cut edge that I just made as opposed to this lower edge.

So I would just come in and cut a two-and-a-quarter-inch strip, which I'm gonna line my ruler up with two and a quarter. You want to make sure you're always using a ruler that's big enough for your project. So when I was first lining it up, my ruler was way too high, and it wasn't actually down here at the lower edge. And now you can see, I have two and a quarter inches. Here we go.

Right along the edge. And now I would come in here and cut. And now I have a two-and-a-quarter-inch strip that's cut on the bias. Now the one thing when you are cutting your strips on the bias is you're not gonna get as much length out of your strip as if you were cutting on one of the straight of grain, just given how fabric is made. So because of that, you are most likely going to have to join your strips together.

So here are a couple of strips that I have, and you want to join your strips together doing what is called an L seam method. And that is where you're gonna take your pieces of fabric. You're gonna put them right sides together. And it creates an L. Right now mine's an upside-down L, but it's still an L.

So this is the L seam method. And what you want to do is you want to stitch this at a diagonal angle, so you can make it into one long strip. When you're stitching something like this, if you've never done an L seam construction before, it can be sometimes very easy to accidentally stitch the diagonal in the wrong way, and then you're not gonna actually get a long strip. You're just gonna have to cut it apart and start over. So when I was first taught this method, I was taught to think of this as a road.

This is a road here. This is a road here. And these are dead ends. So you want to block off the dead end so the road continues. So you need to sew in this direction.

So that's sort of just a fun little way that I was taught to remember which way to do my diagonal stitching. But so I want a stitch at a 45-degree angle from this edge, or this point of the strip, down to what is essentially the edge, the bottom, of the strip underneath. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take, and again, use that 45-degree line on my ruler. It's lined up right here on this strip. I'm gonna take, and I'm gonna draw a line.

Right, like so. Gonna go ahead and put a pin in, 'cause I don't want it to shift. Always draw your line first, and then put your pin in, or you won't be able to lay a ruler flat to draw your line. But I'm gonna put a pin on one side of my line and a pin on the other side, and now I'm gonna take this over to the machine, and I'm gonna stitch right on that drawn line. Right, like so.

Take it off the machine. Clip my threads. And then before you trim away this extra triangle that you just stitched, I always like to just open it up and make sure it did turn into the strip that I wanted it to do. Once you know that it has, you can go ahead and just fold it back, trim this seam allowance down to about a quarter of an inch, and now you can take it over to your iron and press. But now you have a continuous piece of bias tape that is as long as you need.

You might have to put together three, four, five of these strips, and you've done so at a diagonal seam, which reduces the bulk when you actually make the bias tape. So what we're gonna do now is we have to do some folding and pressing to turn this strip into an actual bias tape that we can use. So I'm gonna bring in my pressing mat here. And the first thing that you want to do is if you have joined, say, five or six or however many strips, you want to make sure you go ahead and press your seam allowance to one side, or you can press it open if you'd like, but go ahead and give those a good press with your iron, so they're staying nice and flat for the next part of the folding and pressing process. So the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna take and lay it with the wrong side up.

And I want you to fold it in half wrong sides together. So exactly in half. I'm aligning those raw edges. And you're gonna give it a press right along this edge. And you're just gonna work your way all the way down this strip, just folding it in half and pressing.

So obviously I have a pretty short strip here to just show you how to make this, but you're gonna do this same process along your entire strip, folding it in half, pressing, and just working your way down your pressing mat. Once you've done that, now we're going to open it up so we can see this center crease. And you're gonna fold both raw edges in towards that crease. So you can do both of them at the same time like this, and you can hold it. You can do one side first, then come back and get the other side.

You just want to be folding both sides, both raw edges, in towards that center. So this one is a little bit more tricky, and we're trying to do both sides at the same time to sort of be able to quickly move your way down the strip without having to put your iron down and readjust. And I'm just folding in towards the center, pressing, moving my way down, again, in towards the center and press. Last little bit here. In towards the center, in towards the center.

Press. And move your way down your strip. Right, like so. Then once you've done that, now you get to come back, refold it in half and give it another good press. This gives you essentially finished edges on all edges.

You have one main fold here on this side, and you have two folds here on this side. So everything in terms of raw edges is contained inside that bias tape. So you're just refolding it in half, giving it a good press, using steam if you want to, and continue down your strip. So, again, there will be a recommended length of bias tape that you should be cutting or making for your size of shorts. And it does include a little bit of extra.

So there's some wiggle room in case you mess up or you need a little extra, but you want to make all of the recommended length of your bias tape. So this is what it should look like. And of course you're gonna need a bunch of it. So here's mine already pre-made and ready to go. Now we need to attach our bias tape to the edges of our shorts.

So you can see on our shorts here, we have bias tape coming down along the side, going around the leg, around the front, and right back up. So that's what I need to do. So I'm gonna take my shorts right here. I'm gonna pick a side. It doesn't really matter what side I start with, but I am going to attach my bias tape down the back, around the leg, and back up the front.

So to do that, I'm just going to start at one edge of my tape. Just gonna kind of unroll it a little bit and just kind of leave it down here at the front of my machine. I just kind of want it to be out of the way, but I want it to be accessible so I can get to all of my bias tape. I'm gonna open it up. Right, like so.

Place my shorts in until the raw edge of the shorts is right at that center fold. And then I'm gonna fold my tape back over. Now, I'm gonna pin just a couple of pins here at the beginning until I get started. These are the only pins I'm gonna put in, and then I'm just going to adjust and wrap my tape around the edge of my shorts as I stitch. And I'm going to be stitching fairly close to this folded edge.

I've made my bias tape so that it should be perfectly folded in half, which means if I'm catching my bias tape on one side, I should be catching the bias tape on the other side. That's why you want to make sure your bias tape is folded perfectly in half, but I want to stay about an eighth of an inch away from that folded edge, just to make sure that I am for sure catching both sides. So. I'll put this on here and stitch. So again, I'm about an eighth of an inch away from that folded edge.

I'm gonna go ahead and stitch up to my pin. Then once I get to my pin, I am going to keep everything up here on my machine. I'm just gonna open up my bias tape, position my shorts so the raw edge of the shorts is right in along that crease, fold my bias tape back over and stitch the next five or six inches. When I get to my finger that was holding the last of what I had adjusted, I know to stop, open that bias tape back up. Again, make sure the edge of the shorts is right into the crease.

And stitch. When you get to the curve, this is why you needed to use bias tape. So you can actually pull on the bias tape a little bit, and it's gonna naturally curve with you around the curve of the shorts. Because it's not a straight line you're gonna need to do just smaller sections at a time. So I'm only doing about an inch or so where I opened up the bias tape.

Make sure the short is pushed all the way into that crease. Stitch. Stop. Make another adjustment and continue on. So you're just kind of lightly pulling on that bias tape as you move around.

And, again, working in smaller sections on the curve than you would be on the straight edges. So I'm coming right around that curve. Now I'm coming back onto another straight edge, so I'll be able to do bigger sections. Like so. And we are approaching one of our seams that we did, a diagonal seam.

That's another reason why we do a diagonal seam, so it really lessens the amount of bulk we have as we're stitching over, 'cause it's not a bunch of seams, one right on top of each other. They were done at a diagonal. So I'm gonna continue on. Now we're at the straight edge. So I'm just pushing that edge of the shorts into the bias tape.

Stitching on. And now we're coming up to the seam that goes between the front and the back. So it is, again, that finished French seam. So all I'm gonna do is just fold that seam allowance to one side. Doesn't really matter which side.

Fold it to one side and continue stitching on. So now we have attached it to the back. Now we're gonna attach it to the front. Now, again, we're still on a straight, so we can just keep opening up our bias tape, making sure the edge of the shorts is pushed all the way into that crease. Right, like so.

Coming around the curve of the front now. So we're gonna go back to working in smaller sections. Right like so. About an inch or so at a time. Again, I'm just kind of lightly pulling on the bias tape, and that's kind of what allows it to naturally curve a little bit.

You don't want to pull too hard on it, 'cause, for one, you don't want to be stretching your bias tape to where when you're not pulling on it, it pulls back and gathers up the fabric. So you're just kind of pulling a little bit, almost taut on the fabric, but now we're coming back up the front. And we're gonna finish this last little straightaway, Making sure that edge of the shorts is pushed all the way in to the crease of that bias tape. Sits right up to the edge. Then go ahead and take this off of the machine.

You're going to clip your threads. And you're also going to trim your bias tape, because this is the extra bias tape that I need to do the other side of the shorts. But I want to show you what this is looking like right here, 'cause I think it can be a little bit hard to see everything coming together when you're looking at it sort of in a jumble underneath the machine bed that like that. So this is what we just did. We attached our binding to the back of the shorts.

We did a curve, came around the leg, and came back up the front. So when we go to actually finish the sides of our shorts, all we're gonna be doing is folding over and overlapping the two edges of that bias tape from the back to the front and stitching. And that creates our leg opening and our side seam. This is where it's sort of easy to adjust the size of the pants if you need to. If maybe you made a, or you cut a bigger size than you thought you needed, and you want to make them a little smaller, normally I would overlap the bias tape to where the folded edge of one just lays right on top of the other.

If your shorts are a little bit too big, feel free to overlap that further. You can overlap them by an inch or so. The more you overlap them, the smaller the leg is gonna be, the smaller the actual short is gonna be. So just an option that you can do if you need to size them down just a little bit. Go ahead and trim off from where we started.

And now I'm gonna do the exact same thing with the other side. I'm just gonna flip it over. This time, I'm gonna start on the front of the shorts and work my way around to the back. So I'm gonna, again, open up my bias tape, place the shorts so that the raw edge is right into that fold. Gonna give myself a little bit of wiggle room here at the top to play around with, so I'm not starting right at that top edge.

But once I have that started, put in a pin or two to hold it, just to get me over to the machine. And then once I start stitching, then I can just make my adjustments as I go. So now that I have it pinned, take it over. And we can stitch. Again, about an eighth of an inch away from the folded edge.

I'm gonna stich up to that pin. Now I'm just gonna make adjustments as I go. So, opening up that bias tape. The raw edge of the shorts is pressed all the way into that folded edge. And I'm gonna continue stitching.

Coming around the curve again. So always slow down and just work in smaller sections. So again, I'm working in, I'd say about an inch, maybe even a half inch, at a time. And if your bias tape looks like it's got a little curve to it or any little puckers or anything, it will press out nice and flat once you're done stitching. Oops.

My scissors are hidden under there. And working small little sections. Coming around that curve. Right, like so. Now we have another straight edge.

And now we're about to do, approach that under, or inner, leg seam. So all I want to do is look and see what direction I'd folded this seam allowance when I was stitching one side, so I folded it, technically, I think it went away from me, or maybe towards myself on this one. So now I just need to make sure I'm going the same way, so it will lay flat if pressed. You don't want it to be one going one way, one going the other way, 'cause then it'll never lay flat, and it might be a little bit uncomfortable. So just make sure you have it going the same direction on both sides.

So I'm gonna make sure it's folded, in this case, away from me, so it lays nice and flat. Stitch over that. And then I'm gonna finish up. This one now is the back of the shorts. So again, when you're looking at it on your machine, and it might be kind of hard to determine front from the back, 'cause there really isn't a whole lot of difference between the front and back pattern pieces, just a little bit of extra on the back to make it a slightly bigger pattern piece, but it's easy to see once you have it stitched, and it's laying flat.

So I'm gonna continue on... adding this bias tape. And this is another option where you could do some different stitching if you wanted, if you wanted to do, say, like a zigzag stitch along the edge of this bias tape to hold it in place, just add a little extra, sort of added detail, you could do that. My thread is just slightly contrasting to the bias tape, but you could do something, like, especially since I'm using sort of a blue-and-white-striped fabric, I could have used blue thread to stitch down my white bias tape. And that would have been a nice sort of decorative element.

So you have some things that you can play around with when you are attaching your bias tape if you want to add a little extra flair or design to your shorts. But I'm finishing up this last curved edge, again, about a half an inch at a time, inch at a time, when you're working on that curve. You can go in much larger, much longer, sections when it's straighter, 'cause it's easier to keep everything aligned. Coming right around, and I'm gonna finish up and stitch right off the edge. Whoops.

Make sure it's lined up first. And then I'll do that. All right. Take it off the machine. Clip the threads.

Trim the excess bias tape. So this is about how much I had left. You might have a little more, a little less. It kind of depends on how much wiggle room that you gave yourself at the top when you start, but you will have just a little bit of bias tape left. So there's the back of the shorts.

Here is the front. I want to trim my bias tape even with the top of my fabric. And now again, I'm just going to overlap the bias tape edges. So, determine how much you want to overlap them by. Again, if you need to make your shorts a little bit tighter or a little smaller, you can overlap by a little bit more.

I'm gonna overlap just so that the bias tape is one right on top of the other. And I need to put some pins in to hold it. So anytime you're putting pins in something where there's multiple layers, and you really only want to be pinning one of those layers, like if I was trying to put a pin through right here, I would be inadvertently catching the back of the shorts, and I really don't want to do that. So, what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna take a ruler. I'm gonna lay it underneath.

And that way, my pin hits my ruler, and I can use that to sort of help me push the pin back out. And now I'm only pinning through the layers that I want to, and the back of my shorts stays free. So anytime you're trying to pin through sort of a top layer, and you don't want to actually catch the bottom layer, just put a ruler, put something that your pin can't go through, in between your two layers to hold it. So you can do this on the other side too, but now you need to determine how far down you want to stitch. So this is essentially, if you want to call it like a slit or a side opening in your shorts, you can call it that.

And you can decide how high up you want that to go. The important thing is really just that you're consistent between one leg to the other so that they are the same. For me, I wanted to stitch until pretty much all the way down until my bias tapes started going their separate directions. So I'm just gonna take and measure on one side, and I'm gonna say, it's gonna be eight inches. So I'm gonna adjust this pin 'til it's right at eight inches.

And now I know I want to do the exact same thing on the other side. I want to pin and stitch eight inches down. So it doesn't matter how long or how far down you stitch. If you don't want to stitch as far, you don't have to. Just be consistent between one and the other.

Use my same little method here. Put my ruler, so I'm only pinning through the layers that I want to. Start at the top, making sure those raw edges up there are aligned. Got my bias tapes overlapped. And I'm gonna pin.

Right, like so. All the way down More here. And then I'm gonna measure. We have another, rulers everywhere. Another ruler over here that I measure down my eight inches, from the top upper edge.

Right, like so. Right where my finger's at is where I want my last pin to go. And that is my eight inches. Now I need to stitch the... what I just pinned.

So I'm gonna do that by stitching exactly right on top of the lines of stitching that I already did. Now, when you're doing this, again, this is the small size of shorts. So if you're making a different size, you might have a little more room to work with. Maybe you adapted this pattern to be a kids' size, and it's a little bit smaller, and you have less room to work with. You should be able to hold the shorts sort of in a tube like this and get it under your machine to be able to stitch and not worry about catching any of the rest of the shorts in the machine and stitching what you don't want to stitch.

If, again, you adapted this and it's a much, much smaller size, and you just can't find that is working very well, if your machine has the capability to remove part of it, so you have a much smaller sort of area here, you can use that to your benefit. That way, it's easier for the rest of the shorts to kind of hide here in the front, and you're not accidentally stitching anything in place. So I'm gonna stitch, removing my pins as I come up to them. But I'm stitching right on the line of stitching that I already did, which again is about an eighth of an inch... away from that edge.

I'm making sure that no other part of my shorts is making its way underneath that presser foot or under that needle. I don't want to accidentally stitch anything down, and I want to stitch right up to my pin that's at my eight-inch mark. I'm gonna stop with my needle down. I'm now gonna pivot my shorts, so I can stitch right across the bias tape. And now I stitched an eighth of an inch from one side.

I'm gonna turn it all the way around, and I'm gonna stitch an eighth of an inch away on the other side. Again, making sure that none of the shorts that I don't want stitched are underneath that presser foot or that needle. So, I'm gonna get an eighth of an inch away. I've just pivoted. And now I'm gonna stitch...

right up the other side. And I can just stitch right off the edge and clip my threads. And now I have one leg of my shorts done. It's completely bound. Inside seams are all finished with that French seam construction.

So everything on the shorts is gonna be nice and finished. Do the exact same thing on the other side. This way, since I'm coming at it from sort of the opposite direction, I'm gonna start by stitching an eighth of an inch away from the folded edge, pivot, and then come back the other direction, stitching on my line of stitching that I did previously. Again, taking those pins out... as you get up to them.

Making sure no other area of your shorts sneaks under there, 'cause you don't want to accidentally stitch anything. I'm gonna stitch all the way up to my pin marking my eight inches down. Stop with that needle down. I'm going to pivot over, stitch straight across that tape, and then I'll come right back up, following that line of stitching that originally attached my tape to my shorts. Like so.

Take it off the machine. Go ahead and trim those threads. And now we have a pair of shorts. So, we have our front and back stitched. We have our side-seam stitch.

We have our leg openings bound. We are almost done. The only thing we need to do now is do something about the waistband. So I mentioned that this is going to be an elastic waistband top. So I'll bring in my finished pair here.

This is what it looks like. I cut my waistband from the fabric that I used for my binding, because I wanted that contrast look. You don't have to. You can cut your waistband from the exact same fabric as your shorts. You can even do a third additional color if you want to.

That's sort of up to you, design-wise. The length of fabric that you are going to need is going again determine on how tight you want that waistband to fit. A good rule of thumb is to revert back to our original measurement page, where I have your hip measurement. So for me, I'm making the small size, and the smallest hip measurement was 33 inches. So that's how long I cut the waistband that's going to be my waist...

for my waistband. So it's much longer than it needs to be for the waist, but it allows it to actually stretch, so you can put the pants on, and then it just gathers back up. So I wouldn't cut it any longer than that, unless you really purposely want a whole lot of gathers on here. But so always a good rule of thumb is to go ahead and cut your waistband at the smallest of the hip measurements given. The height of the strip that you cut is going to be based on the elastic that you choose.

So I am using one-inch elastic here. It's a little bit over an inch, almost like an inch and an eighth. So with one-inch elastic, I am gonna cut a three inch strip. If you're using wider elastic, you're gonna need a wider strip. I wouldn't go much narrower in terms of elastic, because especially with a waistband, what can happen is that elastic starts to roll or twist, and it just doesn't sit comfortably against the body.

So I wouldn't go anything less than an inch for a waistband. But, so, to make our waistband, I have my three-inch piece that I have cut, and I have folded a crease that has sort of marked my center back. And I'm gonna go ahead and fold it in half again. Right, like so. And just kind of give myself a crease here.

So now I have essentially quarter-marked my waistband, so now I know that I have a center back mark. I'm gonna seam it together, so I have a center front or center back seam, and I have a fold now that's gonna go along the sides of my shorts. With the sides of the shorts, the sides of the shorts are not where the binding is. You need to lay your shorts flat, line up those front and back seams, and then sort of press it flat, and you'll see that the sides, the actual sides of your shorts, are just outside of your pieces of binding. Now, the first thing I need to do is, this was a long strip.

I have already have my folded crease marks in, but I need to put it right sides together, and I need to stitch my waistband into a big tube or a big circle, as opposed to just being a long strip. Again, I'm gonna use a quarter-inch seam allowance. Come in here. Stitch right along the edge. And go ahead and trim these threads.

Now, I want to attach this with, right sides together. All right. So now I'm putting my waistband down onto my pants, and I have, again, all those marks that I can line up. I have a center fold that I've put in the back, or the front. I have my seam that I've just stitched.

And I have my two folds at the side. I am gonna rotate it around so that I do have that seam at the back. But again, I'm right sides together. Just kind of putting the waistband down onto my pants. I have my center back seam of the waistband.

Center back seam of the pants. And I'm gonna go ahead and put a pin here. I have my center front seam, and I have the fold that I have made, that crease fold. Wanna make sure your waistband is not twisted at all, so make sure it's laying flat. There you go.

Right, like so. Center front fold of the waistband. Center front seam. We have the side of our shorts, and we have our fold that we marked at the side. And you should be able to sort of stretch it out with your fingers too.

And it should lay nice and flat right along there. Go ahead and put in a pin here. I'm gonna flip it around. Same thing on the other side. Pull it with my fingers, and it should lay flat against the upper edge of the pants, the shorts.

Now, if you want to put in a couple additional pins, just to make sure your waistband stays right along that edge, you can do that. Also, if you don't want your waistband to be super-gathered, you really just want it to fit nicely along the top edge of your pants, even once you put your elastic in, if the measurement given for the hips, the smallest hip measurement, is longer than the top of your pants ended up being, especially if you decided to overlap your sides just a little bit more, making the top edge of your pants, sorry, the top edge of your shorts, that much smaller, then you can just lay your shorts down, either on a measuring device like this, get a ruler. You can measure this, double it, and add a half-inch. And then you can use that as your measurement as to what to cut the waistband. So just know that it is adjustable if you have adjusted how much you overlapped your side seams.

Now that I have this pinned, I'm gonna go ahead and stitch. And if you're making a much smaller size, again, like you've adapted it to a kids' size, you can leave this part of your machine off if you're not able to put the entire shorts right around your machine like I am here. But I'm stitching... one quarter inch. Stich right up to my pins, Right, like so.

Remove them as I get to them. And continue around the seam for the center back of your waistband. You could press that open if you want, or I just like to press to one side. Find that easy enough to do. Right, like so.

Continuing around. Just kind of rotating my shorts around the machine bed as I stitch. Again, taking out my pins. And when I get to the beginning of my stitching, I'm just gonna overlap the beginning and the end of the stitching by about five or six inches. Right, like so.

Take this off the machine. Clip my threads. And now I have the top part, which are double my waistband. So this is what it's looking like here. Now we need to turn this into the actual sort of tube or waistband that's going to hold our elastic.

So I'm gonna turn my shorts inside-out, so I can see the seam that I want to be stitching and I want to be covering. But what you want to do is you want to take, and the seam that you just stitched, you want that seam allowance to be up towards the waistband. You're going to fold the upper edge of your waistband to the wrong side by one-quarter inch, and then you're gonna overlap it over the seam that you just stitched. So it's gonna look just like this. Now I'm gonna pick it up so I can put a pin in.

If you want to keep it laying nice and flat, you can use that same technique where you come in here with your ruler and lay that in between the layers. So that way you can, again, fold the upper edge of the waistband one-quarter inch to the wrong side. Gonna overlap. Cover up that seam allowance, and you can put a pin in, and you're gonna do this all the way around, and then we're going to stitch it. But what's important when you're stitching, important to remember, is that we need to leave an opening somewhere so we can actually insert our elastic.

So I'm just gonna continue moving around. I find it's easier to pick it up a little bit than keep it laying flat. So I'm gonna keep my fingers sort of between the layers, so I'm not pinning where I don't want to. And I'm just gonna come in here, again, folding that down a quarter of an inch, making sure that seam allowance is pressed, or folded, I should say, up and in towards that waistband. And then putting my pins in in the directions where when I stitch, I can be stitching up to the pin and pulling out that pin as I get up to them.

So I'm folding that seam allowance up, folding the upper edge by about a quarter of an inch, overlapping over that seam. Make sure it lays flat. And pin it. Now, if you like this pattern, and you want to make several of these shorts, and maybe you're on your third or fourth pair of shorts that you're making, when you get to this step, if you want to just fold and stitch as you go, and not put in all these pins, kind of like we were doing when we were attaching our bias tape, you can do that, since our waistband at this point is the same width as it is at the top as it is at the bottom, there isn't really anything that should be getting off in terms of adjustments, so you could do that. But I do like to make sure that, especially like right here, I have my folded crease that marks my side.

So I want to make sure that folded crease is right at the side. You don't really want your waistband to get wrinkled or sort of twisted or pulled in one direction or the other. So I find this a good step to put in some pins. Now I'm gonna continue along here, all along this upper edge, folding under a quarter of an inch, sort of covering up that seam allowance. I'm putting in a pin.

So I'm gonna go all the way around the front, all the way around the back. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put a pin at the back. That's gonna be my little reminder to leave an opening so I can get my elastic in. So the opening doesn't have to be too big. And I'm gonna show you how I insert my elastic using a tool known as a bodkin.

And a bodkin, all that is, is it literally meant to feed elastic through a waistband, feed a drawstring through, like the hood of a sweatshirt or something. And it just sort of grips onto whatever it is you're trying to put through your casing or your tube and allows you to easily pull it through. I'll show you this bodkin in a minute, but bodkins come in a variety of sizes and widths. If you want one that's the exact width of the elastic you're using, you can do that. The one that I'm gonna use is a little bit more of a universal.

You can use it for any size, because it has a clip on it that just allows you to clip it onto whatever it is you're using. Or, of course, if you don't have a bodkin, you can always use a safety pin. Just something that kind of gives you a little bit of grip on that front end of the elastic and allows you to pull it through. So this is my shorts. They're pinned.

The waistband is pinned. This is the front. I know that because my strips of my bias binding are closer to the front than the back. So this is the back. So I want to leave open an area between about here and here so I can insert my elastic.

So I'm gonna go ahead and stitch this. Again, I'm going to, if I need to, I can take off this area of my machine, so I can more easily slip my shorts under this machine. Right, like so. And I'm going to be stitching fairly close to this lower folded edge. So I'm gonna go ahead and remove this first pin.

The folded edge should be right about at that seam line, should be covering it up. And I'm just going to stitch right along this edge. Again, this is another area where you could be using some contrasting thread if you really wanted to have a nice pop of color on your shorts. You could even be doing a decorative stitch here if you wanted to do something really fun along your waistband. If you decide to do a decorative stitch, just make sure that it doesn't bite too much into your waistband or take away too much of your waistband, or you might need to make your waistband wider to accommodate the elastic.

All right. Gonna continue taking my pins out as I go around. Anytime I'm coming over one of those side-seam allowances, just make sure it's laying flat. It doesn't really matter which direction it goes, either towards you or away from you. Just make sure it's laying flat.

Right, like so. And because of the way we've placed the pins, it's very easy to sort of stitch right up to them. Pull them out as we go. And continue on. If any area of your shorts the seam was starting to come out from between the waistband, just push that back in.

You don't really want to be able to see that. Want it hidden within the seam. Like so. Push it in. Now I'm coming up to my last pin, and, again, I have that vertical pin in there to tell me, or remind me, that I need to stop, or I'm not gonna be able to put my elastic into my pants.

So when I get pretty close to that pin, I'm gonna go ahead and take it off. You can clip those threads. And now I have my waistband attached to my shorts, and now I need to insert the elastic. So, I'm gonna go ahead and put this back on so it's out of my way. And this is where you can determine how tight you want your waistband to fit.

You can either at this point put the shorts on right now and then sort of pinch out the sides, so you know, okay, I need my elastic to cinch in my waistband by an inch or two inches. If you are making these for someone else, and you don't know how much you want it to cinch in, a good rule of thumb is to take your same waistband measurement. So if I took my elastic, and I made it the same length as my waistband. Right, like so. I'm gonna make it an inch shorter, and then when I overlap the edges by about a quarter of an inch, that's gonna make my elastic about an inch and a quarter shorter than my pants.

So it's not gonna seem like a whole lot. It's gonna be about right where I'm pinching my fingers, but it's gonna be just enough to sort of cinch in that waistband and make it so where this fits nicely. So I'm gonna line this up with my edges. Right, like so. I wanna come in, lay it, even with an inch line.

Come in an inch shorter. So I'm just rotating this down, so that that is an inch in. I'm still aligned over my other edge. I can come in here, clip this off. Right, like so.

Extra, this is my extra elastic. And now when I put this into my waistband and I overlap my edges by about a quarter to three eighths of an inch, my elastic waistband is now slightly smaller than my actual fabric waistband, which is what gives us this nice gather and looks better when you're wearing your pants. So now all you need to do is feed your elastic into your waistband. So this is the bodkin that I like to use. This is sort of a universal-sized bodkin.

You you don't have to get one that's specific to your size of elastic. And it has this little ring on there, right here. All you do is, pull this ring back, and that opens up this little claw, or sort of clip edge. You're going to clip it onto the elastic, about a half inch or inch down, and then just slide this ring back down, and it's just gonna hold it. So now I have this nice big sort of handle, or extra-big safety pin, and that's what you used to use to feed drawstrings or things in, makes it easy enough to be able to insert the bodkin into my waistband, and I'm just going to use my fingers to move that bodkin right along.

And that's gonna bring my elastic through my waistband. So I'm just going an inch or so at a time, pushing that bodkin forward, pulling back on the pants, and it should very easily be sliding in. If for some reason, it's not. So you come to an area, it's not getting past. It's not working.

You could be caught on a seam allowance, if you're going over a seam allowance. You could maybe have gotten too close or too far away from the edge when you were stitching your waistband. And maybe you've accidentally made your waistband too narrow in a spot, and you're gonna have a hard time getting your elastic through. But you just want to be kind of gentle, working your way around, making sure when you're pulling on the bodkin, that you don't accidentally pull that little ring that we just use to secure it onto our elastic. Don't pull that too hard to where you undo it, because then you'll have to start over.

And I have done that. But I'm just gonna work my way down, pulling the waistband around that elastic. And I'm kind of always keeping an eye on the end of my elastic, because I don't want to pull it all the way in and then not have an end to still be able to see. But so I'm gonna keep my shorts pretty bunched up, and I'm back around at the beginning. Now I can pull out my bodkin all the way, like so.

Now I have two ends of my elastic. And now, now that I can hold onto, I can even clip the two ends together if I wanted to, but now I can hold on to both ends of the elastic and now adjust the elastic around the pants. So all I would do is, like, evenly distribute that, but while I still have both of these ends and my shorts kind of pushed down in a way, now I can actually take them, and I'm gonna overlap by about three eighths of an inch, and I'm gonna come over here, and I'm going to stitch these together. Now, some people like to use a zigzag stitch when they're stitching their elastic together, just go over and over the edge. I like to just kind of do a rectangle or a box, if you will, around those edges.

I think it's gonna make it nice and secure. And I'm gonna go around it a couple of times just to give myself a lot of security in my elastic, 'cause I don't really want the elastic to come apart as I'm trying to put these shorts on or off. So I'm just coming around like so and stitching a rectangle. Again, you could zigzag across the edge if you wanted to. You could go back and forth.

How ever it is that you want to stitch your elastic together. But after you stitch it together, give it a good little pull just to make sure it's not going to come undone. Once you've done that, now, you can keep pulling and adjusting your shorts until your waistband, or your elastic, is entirely in your waistband. And it might just take you fidgeting with it a little bit, but you can see now we've almost got all of it in there. Just need to pull it a little more.

One side, you can even kind of push it in there. Like so. Pull on the other side like that. And then once you get your elastic completely in your waistband, get it laying flat, all you have to do is finish stitching this little opening. So all you should have is about three to four inches.

We want to, again, push our seam allowance up in towards the waistband, fold the upper edge of that waistband down a quarter of an inch. You want to overlap that seam just like we did before. Might be a little tighter to do so, 'cause you're going right around that elastic. Put in a pin or two if you need to. And then take that back over into your machine and just finish that last little bit of stitching.

Once you finish that stitching, your shorts are complete, and you have bound shorts that were made by a simple two pattern pieces. You had a front. You had a back. You bound those edges, and that's what enabled to overlap the sides and create the leg openings. Created a simple waistband, inserted that elastic using some bodkins, and then stitched that to finish it off.

And you have a nice pair of shorts that you can use for summer activities, lounge wear, or anything you want to do in your nice new pair of shorts.