Bermuda Shorts

When the sun’s out, so are my legs! No wolf whistling please!

Anyway, I don’t shy away from shorts, even short shorts. After all, I find them extremely comfortable during hot weather and great for some extra tan. I have a few shorts pattern ranging from short shorts, tailored shorts and wide hem shorts but realised that I am missing a pattern for some formal shorts. Bermuda shorts as some would call it. Ones that sits an inch from the knee and in my case, sits high on the waist.

When I think about Bermuda shorts, I immediately think about those shorts that the British Army wore in hot climates during the Second World War. I call them Colonial shorts as seen in pictures of military officers in India and South East Asia during the 40s and 50s. I think I vaguely remember seeing pictures of them in the museum when I went back to Malaysia.

Looking at all my shorts patterns, I realised that all of them are pretty, well, short. In order to create a pattern for some proper dress shorts, I altered my high waisted trousers and chopped them off at the knee. After all, the shape was what I wanted so there was no point in drafting something new when the pattern is already there.

I chose a beige coloured fabric that I had left over from previous projects. I thought this best represented the look I was going for.

Sewing would have been a piece of cake had it not been for the fact that the thread I was using was disappearing fast as I was sewing. Just my luck when it comes to things like this and I didn’t have any spare thread of that colour. Eventually I had to swap between using a white thread on the underneath. I could have gone and bought another spool but my local haberdashery shop has closed down and I had to trek all the way to the nearest town or buy it online, both which wasn’t feasible at the moment.

When I finished sewing the shorts, I realised that I had made a mistake or rather failed to check my patterns as the front pattern was 1 cm longer that the back pattern. I always tell people to check their patterns and seeing that I blatantly forgot about it was tantamount to a pattern cutting crime.

Wrist slapping aside, I finished this pair of shorts and wore it on a trip to the seaside. I do have to say that it’s either that my preference has changed or just the fact that I am getting older but I find these shorts really comfortable. They do have a resemblance to what pensioners wear but then again, I’m sure they have more experience in fashion that me!

I was tempted to make another pair but rummaging around the supplies box yielded nothing, so on a trip to London, I went to the clearance section of the fabric shop to see if I could find the type of fabric I wanted. I managed to get a remnant heavy weight fabric in army green and replicated these shorts. However, I changed the direction of the pleats because I was wary of how the shorts bulged out in the front.

Spot the difference? I also sewed the belt loops a bit lower as I wanted the waist band to show a little.

Anyway, I’ll end this post with a picture of me sitting on my campaign chair in my Sunday best (shorts included) sipping a G&T (Ok! Too early for that. It’s just water; iced, mind you).

~END~