Mini Emerson Cropped Pants and Shorts

 Garment basics - it turns out that kids need them too.  And while I love sewing dresses for the girls (and they usually love wearing them), they're not so practical for everyday wear so I was excited to try out the Mini Emerson Crop Pants/Shorts pattern by True Bias.  With summer quickly approaching, O was in need of some shorts and I wanted to sew up the cropped pant version to see if it was a style that interested her.

In fact, while she initially said that she only wanted the shorts version, I made the cropped version first because I think they're just so darn cute and because I had this striped rayon in my stash that I thought would be perfect for a pair of swingy, drapy culotte-esqe pants.  As it turned out, these short little pants are everything I could have dreamed them to be.  I love the look of the striped fabric with this pattern and while I didn't do the greatest job of stripe matching on the waistband, I'm going to cut myself some slack because they still turned out pretty darn cute.  And they must be alright because O ended up loving them and wears them often.  And every time she does I think, "man, I wish those were in my size!"

For the second version, I made the shorts out of a linen-rayon combo leftover from this project.  The fabric ended up being a great choice for these shorts (although, yes, it wrinkles easily but it's kids' clothes so I'm not gonna stress about it) and I'm equally in love with the way they turned out.

O, however, has a wee little complaint with them.  With a somewhat wide leg, apparently it's a little too easy for others to see up her shorts when she sits like her mother sits - with her legs wide open (what can I say - all those times my mom told me to "sit like a lady" fell on deaf ears).  I tried to convince her that it didn't matter because she obviously has the cutest underwear (because they're homemade!) but this is the age where someone seeing your underwear is apparently a huge deal so we'll have to see if it's a deterrent to her wearing the shorts in the future.

Hopefully not, because she sure does look cute in them!