Tutorial: How to Sew Shorts Under a Skirt for Costumes

Make your grid. Use your length measurements from above to draw horizontal lines for the length between the waist, hip, crotch , thigh, and bottom length of the pants. Then draw a straight line down for your center front.

Add your full hip point according to your calculations above. The measurement around your hips divided by 4, then add 1.5 inches.

Draw a line straight up from the hip to the waist line.

Draw the crotch line and connect it to the center front with a curve. Take your full hip measurement and divide it by 4 again. Then measure that distance out from the center front on the crotch line.

Don’t worry too much about this curve, you’ll can fine-tune it in a later step.

Draw a vertical guideline halfway in between the center front and the side of the pant leg.

Draw the base of the pant leg (the front knee calculation from earlier). Make sure the center of this line connects with the guideline.

For me, the base of the shorts comes out farther than the center front and past the hip point. Yours might not and that’s okay. It just depends on how thick your thighs are compared to your hips.

Connect the base to the sides of the pants. Try to make right angles at the bottom of the pant legs.

At this point, you also want to check the thigh measurement. Make sure the length from one side of the pant to the other on the thigh line is bigger than the calculation for the front thigh you made earlier.

Trace the side and bottom of the front pant to the back.

Move the side seams over half an inch. Keep the same shape, just scootch the side over half and inch on the outseam and inseam.

Make a line straight down from the waist to the hip half an inch in from the center back line.

Draw the crotch line and connect it to the hip with a curve. Take your full hip calculation and divide it by 2 again. Then measure that distance out from the center back on the crotch line.

Draw the inseam on the back of the pants the same way you did on the front.

Check to make sure the thigh line from side seam to inseam is greater than your back thigh measurement from earlier.

Check the crotch curve. This part is a little bit tricky, but you want the seam to create a straight line through the front and back crotch. Place the points of seams together as they would be if you are sewing them. If it’s not straight, just draw a straight line and adjust the point of both sides.

You’ll also need to make sure the inseams of the front and back are the same length. It’s totally normal if you need to adjust the crotch points a couple of times as measure, to make sure the front and back will fit together.

Measure the front and back waistlines of your pattern and add them together. Create a waistband using that measurement. Make the waistband 4 inches thick and cut it out with one side on the fold.

Using your front shorts piece as a guide, copy the waist line.

Draw the center front of the skirt length and make it 1 to 2 inches longer than the shorts.

Make a horizontal guideline half an inch up from the length of the skirt. Then place a point for the side of the skirt 1 to 2 inches out from the base of the shorts. It doesn’t matter exactly how long the base of the skirt is, as long as it’s wider than the shorts.

Draw the side seam and draw a curve for the base connecting the dots. Cut the skirt out on the fold, and you can use the same pattern piece for the front and back of the skirt.

Don’t forget to add seam allowance and hem allowance to your pattern pieces!