SEWING: Zara inspired skorts

Hi internet!

This is my first sewing tutorial, and I am very excited. A couple of months ago I saw this Zara skorts (shorts+skirt) everywhere:
At first sight it looks like a skirt or as I thought: A "look at my panties" skirt, but then I discover the little shorts behind it, this piece is just genius.

Original Zara Skorts

This trend brought me back to my childhood, I had so many skorts when little. I was fabulous but still able to climb trees and ride my bike without any of those silly boys seeing what was underneath.

And, since I'm still very adept to this idea when I landed my eyes on this project I felt in love. I never wanted to buy the original, but make my own. 

So many possibilities!!!

>>Click on read more for the full tutorial:

Materials:

- DIY Pattern pieces

- Fabric

I bought 50cm of a blue cotton 

- Scissors, thread, sewing tools
I used black thread because I like the contrast, feel free to match colors.

- Zipper

- Sewing machine

-Iron

You will need to iron all seams flat as you go

- Pattern:

I made the pattern a while ago, so I don't really have a tutorial for it. I usually decide on the project, draw the patterns and store it on my "Costura" folder (Sewing in Portuguese), eventually when I find the fabric and the time I go back to it.

But basically you will need 4 pattern pieces: Shorts (front and back), skirt and waist band.

1. Shorts: Draw a pattern of your favorite pair of shorts, don't forget the seam allowance (on the bottom of mine I ended up removing it because my shorts were too long)

I write all my stuff down in Portuguese, but it just says Front Back and cut 2.

NOTE: The back crotch is always a few cm bigger than the front.

2. Waist band: You can pattern your shorts waist band or just mark how big you want it and cut off from the original short pattern. This is a quarter of my waist, so to go all around I will need 4 pieces (8 since its double).
Again Portuguese, on the right it indicates the side of the waist, and the straight left it indicates the middle. 

NOTE: Seam allowance all around.

3. Skirt: This is the tricky part, there isn't really a method for it, what I did is draw again my front short pattern and extend the waist and kinda free hand the asymmetry of the skirt.

 With the short pattern over it so you can picture it better:

 - Cutting:

I got 50 cm of this blue cotton at a thrift shop and I payed the extreme price of $0,50 for it. This is just a basic fabric and I never made shorts before, so if everything ended up terrible wrong it was only 50 cents.

You can go for any type of fabric you like, but I recommend something steady enough to keep your asymmetric points looking good, otherwise it will loose its shape.

I did all the cutting at night, and the pictures aren't really looking good. But as soon as you have it placed there is no way to go wrong.

I folded the fabric in half and placed my pieces around, you will need 2 pieces of each pattern (short front and back and skirt), only the waist band you will need 8 pieces so go ahead and cut it 4 times.

Nothing is on cut on fold here, just double to save you time.

I was some steps ahead when realized the night before pictures were horrible, so please ignore the seam.

My plan was to make the skirt part double, but when cutting it I realized it would make the piece too heavy looking, so I just cut 2 pieces instead and serged the edges.

I don't own a serger but you can easily make the same effect of hems with a zigzag stitch, I set my machine for a wide stitch of a small length.

Ironing is for the weak 

"serged hems" not as professional as the real deal but does the job the same way.

-SEWING!
After all these Pre-parts you are ready to start putting everything together and make your skorts come to life. :)

Step 1: Sew the crotches together (the curvy parts) front with front and back with back. When you open it up you see your shorts taking form.

Step 2:  Measure your skirt pieces on the front shorts to mark where do you need to hem it. 
Follow the red lines

In this picture one side is already ready, just missing the bottom.

Step 3:Hem around. Make sure the other skirt piece is hemmed in the opposite direction.
You can make a rolled hem but I just made it the simple way, since the edges were already serged, the finish is the same. 

Step 4: Grab all your big pieces and make a "sandwich" between your skirt parts and shorts. It goes like: Front shorts right side up, overlap of your skirt parts right sides facing up and back shorts with wrong sides up. Sew both sides of the shorts (red line), leaving zipper opening (blue line)
Don't forget to back stich and iron all seams flat as you go.

NOTE: Because of the already hemed skirt pieces, you will have just enough room on the legs for the leg hem, don't freak out if the skirt doesn't match the bottom all the way.

Don't worry, that is how it should be.

Step 5: Sew the legs. Be careful to leave the skirt out of the way.

Step 6: Turn it right side out, the first picture is how it should look like when you open it up. Place the skirt where it should sit, pin it and baste stitch (red line). You don't want it moving around when you attach your waistband.
NOTE: This is a good time for a fitting, it is still a little clumsy but you can already see if the shorts fit OK and if the skirt is in a nice angle.

Make sure everything looks good before moving to the next picture

Baste stitch only the front, where the skirt stays

Step 7: Before the waist band, hem the legs of you short.
Same idea here as the hemming of the skirt, I did a simple hem but you can do a rolled hem as well. Eventually you just go back and cut any fraying off.

Step 8: To the waist band. Sew all the 8 the waist band pieces together like so:
Pay attention on the correct sides and make sure all the seams match.

NOTE: Our zipper opening is at the side, so you will place the waist band like so: 

Step 9: Even knowing that we are doing a double waist pin only one side of the waist band all around the skort, right sides together, seams matching seams.
This part was always confusing for me, if you have any questions I will be happy to answer

In the top corner you can see my zipper opening is folded. Don't do that, open it up.

Step 10: Make sure everything matches. Grab your iron and iron up the seam joining the waist band to the shorts towards the waist band. Fold your waist band in half (like shown in the picture above before sewing).
NOTE: It's ok if you miss the seams for a few millimeters, wouldn't be DIY if had to be perfect. But if it is completely out, unfortunately you will have to redo it. 

See the big bottom seam? The one holds everything together. Iron her up.

That is the beauty of sewing for me, the back is all raw and unfinished while the front looks just perfect

 Step 11: Now let's make those ugly seams disappear. If you ever sewed bias tape you will recognize this as a very similar idea. Grab your iron and fold in about a cm from the remaining raw edge of you waist band, iron a fold of +/- 1cm all the way around. Making it like a giant bias tape. Now simply fold the just ironed part in and pin all the way around. What is left to do is top stitch.
NOTE: I realized this part might get confused because the picture shows the outside of the skort while is the inside that is folded and still must be sewn. Since I like to make sure my top stitching is perfect FROM THE OUTSIDE, if it's inside is secured and on the right place you can go ahead and top stitch from the front with no fear.

Step 12: Attach the zipper in the space we left open for it on the side. Make it go all the way up to the waist band.

Now the only thing left to do is try it on for any final adjustments. Of course you have to try it as you go, but sometimes only in the end you notice that the fit is not perfect.
Until you master your sewing skills and your pattern making skills this will happen quite often. There isn't any clothing piece I made so far that, when finishing up I realized I did not like something on it and decided to seam ripe everything and do it again.
With this skort was not different, my skirt was too big and I decided to make it less pointy.

Don't be afraid to do so, and re-do as many time you need. Also if you realize your fitting problem can be adjusted in your start up pattern piece, please go back and adjust that. If you have a pattern piece that works just perfect on your body type you wanna hold on to it forever. :)

This is the final result:

What do you think?
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And if you made your own skorts from my DIY I really wanna see it. Send it on Instragram with the hashtag: #DIYwithJulia

I see you soon!
Tchau, tchau... :)