Picnic Shorts with Dakota Top

Tuesday, August 22, 2017


This post has been a long time in the making! Back in June I posted about my last pair of Oliver + S Class picnic shorts. I noted then that I was going to try my hand at lengthening the pattern. I think writing about it made me stick to my guns and do it! More on these shorts in a bit.


First the top, this is the Modkid Dakota Swing Top. It is my go to woven blouse pattern. I love the fit and the shape. The pattern comes together quickly too. 



Both fabrics were from Fabric Mart, but it doesn't look like they are still available. I think they were designer prints from J. Crew. The top is a lovely lawn and the shorts are a stretch twill. I'm afraid they look more pink in the photos, but they are a perfect light lavender. One nice thing about ordering from Fabric Mart is that you can opt for adding matching thread to your order. As you can see, it was a perfect match for a slightly tricky color!


Back to these shorts! As you can see in the first photo, I successfully lengthened the shorts to fall at fingtip length, and I can show you a bit of how I did it. 


First, I overlayed the facings on top of the main pattern pieces, back on back and front on front. I made sure to have my grainline exactly vertical. Then, I drew a horizontal cut line. I placed the line as best I could to fall above the curve of the facing and below the crotch seam. For the back facing, I needed to move the stitch marking down to account for the added length. I made a similar cut line on the front and front facing making sure to line it up at the same height as the back cut line.


I cut along these lines and spread the pattern apart adding the desired length. 


The final step was to redraw the pattern edges. On the front side, this meant just connecting the corners. On the inseam side, I redrew the line to connect the crotch to the hem edge. After trimming everything up, I was good to go. Hope this helps anyone out there that needs to make a similar adjustment.
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