Love: Sewing, Books and more: These Shorts Are Made For Walking

I had a minor break through on my laziness today! While going through my clothes, I found 14 pairs of khakis! Yes, 14 pairs. I had that many because at my last job I was a manager and we had to either wear khakis, black pants, or navy pants. So, my wardrobe consisted mainly of khakis. While going through them, I found a pair that I had purchased at the Goodwill. They were loose fitting on the legs and while wearing them at work I some how got a black marker mark on my tush. I was going to throw them away, when I started thinking of all the black shorts that I see and have been loving the last couple of months. So, I decided I would try to dye the pants and make them into shorts. Here is what the pants looked like before I started.

As you can see on the right leg, I started to cut the lower part of the pants off. I just wanted to have the least amount of fabric to dye. I would recommend wearing gloves when dying, but if you do not have gloves you can use a ziplock bag.

I made sure to follow the directions on the container of black dye. After letting the fabric soak in the dye for 30 minutes, I hand rinsed the shorts. Then to be on the safe side I washed the shorts and dried them.
This is what they looked like once dried.

They came out brown! With a purplish tone...but mostly brown.

I like that the stitching didn't dye. It made for a good contrast

I wanted my shorts to be about 5" long from the inseam. I plan on making them longer so I can hem and fold them over. I figured an extra 2" would be enough length....but it really wasn't. I would suggest that if anyone is going to try this they add 3" to the length they want.

I cut off any excess and then turned the shorts inside out and folded the shorts over about 1 1/2" and pinned it down.

Then I sewed a straight stitch as close as I could get to the edge.

At this point, I turned my iron on and needed it to warm up. So, while it was warming up, I decided to fix the awful pockets on these pants. They were all huge and the back pockets made me look like I had a lump of poo in my pants. Take a look at the photos to see how big these dreadful things were.

One of the front pockets before fixing it.

one of the back pockets before fixing it.

To fix them, I just sewed a straight stitch across the bottom. Then, I cut of the excess and did a zig zag stitch on the outside of that. Seen here.

my stitching is not pretty, but no one can see it.

the back pocket. Now I won't look like I have a lump of poo in my pants.

After this, I ironed my pants and this is what I ended up with. I could have left it like this, but my stitching was awful because my bobbin thread was acting up on my first leg I sewed.

See, you can even see where I didn't sew all the way around on that side. So, it's a good thing I was planning on folding the bottoms up. Once I did that, I put a small stitch on each side seam to hold the fold up and two stitches in the front and two stitches in the back to also hold the fold up. I just made sure to not stitch through the top layer. That way, you can't see it. Then, I ironed the shorts again.