Oliver & S: Sketchbook Shorts

I do believe this is the first piece of clothing I have sewn for my son.  FINALLY!  Anyway, I’ve been seeing lots of plaid shorts around for boys, but nothing in my budget (yes, I’m cheap).

So finally found some left over suiting fabric for 5 dollars (ok, not so cheap but it is 100% wool after all) and armed with the Oliver and S Sketchbook Shorts pattern, I was finally going to make my boy a pair of shorts that would fit him nicely.

Or so I thought!  Firstly, since I only had a limited piece of fabric to work with, I didn’t bother with trying to match the plaids up, ok, not a big deal there.  Secondly, my two front pleats are facing the wrong way, again, not a drama there but when I got to attach the waistband onto the shorts,

I was like, “Oh, oh, what’s going on here!” as the waistband was wider than the top of the shorts.  So I thought I’d made a mistake somewhere, missed a step perhaps or traced out the wrong size but still couldn’t see where I could have gone wrong. This is when I decided to go check out the Oliver & S forums and found this errata on the pattern.  Not happy at all.  I didn’t have enough fabric to cut out another pair so had to soldier on and finish it by cutting down the waistband to size.

The result?  A rather tight pair of shorts that is probably not that comfortable.  The resulting stretched waistband was about 18 inches which for my nearly 2 year old boy is just too small for him.  So now I’m trying to give it away to a good home but am having trouble thinking of any boys I know that are 12 to 18 months old (it was suppose to be size 18 to 24 months).

I know mistakes happen but still can’t help feeling peeved about having to pay good money for the pattern and find that it has errors.  I guess that’s why people make muslin patterns first, huh?  Oh well, lesson learnt.