Vintage shorts alteration

Difficulty:

Cost:

 Thrifted Shorts- $4

Materials:

Some cute shorts

Tools:

A sewing machine

Scissors

Pins

Method:

I found these adorable shorts in the 'vintage and retro' section of a local op shop and knew that we were meant to be together.

Dusty pink with lace trim and a pleated high waist? It was love at first sight. 

However, being somewhat small in stature, when it comes to hem lines, anything too close to my knees makes me look a little ridiculous, but luckily this is an easy fix!

So, as the finale in our Salute to Cute month of alterations, I will show you a simple and easy way to shorten a pair of vintage shorts.

One of my favourite parts of these shorts is the lace trim at the bottom, so I'm going to shorten these a little differently to normal so that I don't lose the lovely lace.

Vintage finds are often all about these little details; how lovely and flattering are waist pleats? And they're so feminine too. I'm smitten.

Okay, so the first thing you need to do is cut off the length of short that you don't want.

If there is no detail at the bottom that you want to salvage, simply cut the length off the bottom of the shorts. However, with these I took a section from just above the detailing.

I then pinned the bottom trim section back on to the now slightly shorter shorts and sewed the two pieces back together. The added bonus of altering your shorts this way is that it adds a small amount of volume to the bottom of the shorts for a lovely bloomer effect! 

Et voila! 

A pair of adorable shorts, tailored to fit and complete with pretty lace detailing.

Happy shortening,