I made another pair of Fernway Culottes! This time, I made the shorts version with this floral polyester twill fabric. It wasn’t what I initially had in mind, nor was it my second choice, but I’m really happy with what I ended up with.

*Fabric was provided to me for free as part of the Minerva Brand Ambassador and Fabric Fairy promo teams. Pattern was gifted for testing purposes. All views and opinions are my own.

I go over all the ins and outs of how these shorts came to be in my Minerva post. Head over there to read all about it. Short story: I didn’t expect this fabric to be what it was and I scrapped a completely different project to make shorts instead. Am I happy I did? YES. It was well worth cutting my losses for something I knew I’d wear and that wouldn’t drive me crazy every time I looked at it.

Fabric

This is a Lady McElroy polyester twill from Minerva. It’s a light weight, has lots of drape, and seems pretty wrinkle resistant. It’s also opaque. It’s not the most stable of woven fabrics, especially if it’s slightly off grain, but it’s also not the most slippery fabric around and was pretty easy to work with once I got sewing.

Pattern

I used the Fernway Culottes pattern from Twig + Tale once again, but in a shorts version. I was gifted this pattern for testing years ago and it’s always been one of my go-to patterns. This time, I finally cut the pattern down a few sizes to be closer to my hip size rather than my waist size. All the previous versions I’ve made have been slightly too big with the side seam sitting very far back at the side of my waist and I wanted to fix that. I made a size C, making sure the finished measurements still fit over my waist/hips, and cut elastic to match my waist size (size F). The final fit has the side seam centered perfectly and I love how it fits. I made no other adjustments.

T-Shirt

Here I’ve paired these culottes with one of my latest makes. It’s actually a t-shirt dress that I’ve tucked into the shorts. I don’t wear a lot of red so it was pretty serendipitous to have this work at all. This is the Peak T-Shirt pattern from Wendy Ward’s book, A Beginner’s Guide to Sewing With Knitted Fabrics. She does give dimensions for a dress version, but here I just lengthened the pattern as much as I could to fit it onto one yard of fabric. I made size 1. Fabric is a cotton rib knit from the Fabric Fairy.

Have you ever changed direction midway through a project? Read more about this make over on my Minerva post and be sure to give me a follow while you’re there.