I’m slowly making my way through my most lusted after Peppermint Magazine patterns. Their freebie patterns are available in the Sewing School section of their website. It’s a great place to start if you’re a newbie (or seasoned maker), because you get to try out different designers and styles that are usually simple yet educational. I almost always walk away learning a thing or two. I’ve had my eye on this pattern for awhile now, but it hasn’t risen to the top of my list until now.
Fabric
I used the Tencel Lyocell Twill in Sky Blue from Salt Lake Sewciety where I purchased one yard of it from their remnants section. I loved the feel once I received it and couldn’t wait to try it out in these shorts. I’m new to this type of fabric, although I’ve been wanting to try it for forever, and found the episode on Tencel/Lyocell from Love to Sew extremely interesting and useful. No wonder I never found any Tencel from my local big box fabric shop. I’d highly recommend listening to the episode if you haven’t yet!
Pattern
This is the Spring Shorts pattern from Peppermint Magazine x Pattern Runway which goes up to a size 16 with a 42″ hip. My waist measurement put me in a size 12 while my hip measurement was smaller than the smallest size. With the amount of ease and the elastic waist, I decided to make their smallest size which is an 8 and adjust the elastic to fit. There aren’t finished measurements so I had to guess on which size to make and I am pretty happy with my choice.
The instructions were simple and I had no trouble working through them, except for one part. The instructions cite the seam allowance as 5/8″ unless otherwise noted, but it’s noted as 3/8″ throughout most of the pattern. The only time I didn’t see a notation was for sewing the front and back hem bands so I sewed them together with a 5/8″ allowance which made them slightly too small. It wasn’t super noticeable until I went to topstitch them down which is why there’s puckering at the hems. I didn’t want to go back so I just left it.
Other than that inconsistency, I could see this as a very quick pattern now that I’ve made it once. The only modifications I made were to omit the drawstring. I also had to piece the waistband together to fit onto one yard of fabric. There isn’t an elastic measurement chart, but I cut a ~26″ elastic for reference.
For future iterations, I would consider removing the paperbag waist (an easy fix by cutting a narrower waistband for your elastic width), using a wider elastic and topstitching it, and/or shortening the rise (for a lower fit).
For the label, I added my Ironing is Overrated cotton luxe label which I thought was fitting since Tencel is wrinkle resistant. I can definitely see these shorts as a travel staple.
Have you made the Peppermint Spring Shorts yet? What are your thoughts?
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