To anyone who knows me in the merry months of autumn and winter, it's quite clear, if not utterly blatant, that these chilling months are when my soul reignites.  There’s a sparkle to my eye and a skip to my step.

It's October, and in case you aren't someone who gets festive this time of year, it's Halloween/Samhain.  

I've been carving pumpkins, drinking cider, plotting for my costume, and doing all sorts of other holiday-inspired craftiness.  

The pumpkins my partner and I carved- his is on the left and mine is on the right.

Some of said crafts happen to be two different pairs of shorts that are everything spooky and lovely.  Some of this fabric is leftover from the Halloween quilt I made two years ago, but the fabric for the darker shorts happens to be something I was oogling online for far too long.

I've made a pair of shorts like these before, using a lavender-coloured shot cotton, so I felt relatively confident that it would work out well.  Plus if all else failed I would still have some sort of spooky shorts, and how in this sweet ghostly realm could I pass up on a deal like that?

Most of the lines to cut along were fairly straight forward.  The curve you see is where the leg holes are created, which I managed by drawing a careful line with one of my chalk pencils and then -- channeling all of my potential of ever being a surgeon -- I cut along the chalked line.  

I'm just as surprised as you are that this didn't end with pitiful shreds of fabric or a loss of a phalanx.

I cut out enough pieces so that it seemed as if I was making twice as many shorts as I was, and then used the repeat for the lining in the shorts.  There's obviously a more eloquent way to do this if you're fancy and good at fashion sewing -- but I'm not.  I play in the dirt and fashion sewing and myself get along just about as much as a badger does with the creature that woke it up.  It’s bloody, it’s messy, and there’s at least one angry and frustrated creature that doesn’t know what the hell is going on.  

Another thought behind using the duplicate as the lining gave me comfort that the shorts would be far more durable and that's something I need.

Speaking of durable, I zigzag stitched the every-loving life out of my buttonholes.  I detest when my buttonholes fray out- because let's face it, after they fray out, they're rarely the same.  The buttons slip out, it looks messy, and it's disproportionate in size at the end.  

Little tip that I discovered:  Using a seam ripper (carefully) can make cutting out the middle of the buttonhole so much easier and cleaner.  

I take absurd measures to make sure that my things are durable.  With the last pair of shorts I made, the strain on the buttons started creating holes where they were attached, so this time around I used my machine to stitch tight X's to create a stable and thick point to hand-sew the buttons onto.  

With the first try on, I could feel that the buttons were far more secure having done this.

After the entire morning, and a lot of near misses with stabbing a needle straight through my finger, the buttons were all stitched on.  All I had left to do was add some pleats in the back to add definition to my waist and rump -- also just to keep the pants up.  

Who says practical can't be flattering?

Here they are, in all their splendid glory.

One of the millions upon millions of reasons it's so wonderful to be crafty is that I have a way of creating things that speak to my certain style of eccentricity.  I plan to wear these out, and I know that every moment I'm wearing these I will feel as enchanting as I should.  With pants like these, I might just ride off on a broomstick come this Hallow's Eve.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for sitting a spell with me.

Stay spooky, stay creepy, and stay tuned.