It started with a visit to a small fabric shop to kill some time. Not finding anything I was looking for, I just browsed through everything they had. Two bolts of cotton caught my attention. They were a little heavier than your normal shirting or quilting, and looked like they could work well for shorts. And they had two, which were complete opposites of each other.

I like fabrics where I have different colour version of the same pattern. You can always make fun garments where a pocket, placket or collar is different from the rest.

And then I realised that since a pair of short is really just made up of pairs of identical parts, I could use two fabrics to make one pair of shorts. Feeling all giddy about the prospect, I quickly bought a yard of each. Once home, they went through the ritual three washing and drying cycles to stop any bleeding and get rid of the shrinking.

And then I saw that they weren’t exactly opposites. The dark one was actually a very dark navy colour, and the light one had black letters. The difference was enough for me to halt the project right there.

Or was it?

I tried going online and find a version of the Japanese Kokka fabric. A black version did exist, but no yardage was available as far as I could find. But with all this searching I did find a different print by Kokka, on the same type of fabric. And this I could find in both a white and black version. Hello robots!

I liked this even better for the project, and bought a yard and a half of each. Since it was getting further along in the year, normal pants seemed to be more practical than shorts. (Although I now realise that ‘practical’ is a very relative term when it comes to these pants.)

The pattern would be Jutland Pants, by Thread Theory. I’ve used this pattern before, but always for shorts. This would be the first time I’d use it to make full pants.

When I make this pattern, I start out with the dart in the back panel and go on with the welt pockets. While looking at the panels, I knew I had to swap the welts too. And those robots, could they be matched across the welt? Since the pocket crosses the dart, this is not a standard pattern matching problem. I would have to make the dart in the welt too. A pattern was designed and I did some experimenting. But in the end it turned out that there would just be too much bulk with this fabric and I abandoned the challenge. I did manage to match one robot across the welt.

The front pockets were much easier.

And the rest of the construction presented no problems. I don’t really follow the instructions and construct the pattern in my own way. First finish the back panels and sew them together. Then finish the front panels and construct the fly. After that sew the outside seams, followed by sewing the whole inside seam in one go. Then the belt loops and waistband. And finally the hem.

I chartered my step daughter to take some photos of me wearing it.

I’m not quite sure how much use they will get. Yet, I’m tickled pink with having made them, and just having them. It was a great project to work on.