How to: add lace to shorts

Why hello there my crafty friends!

I have had these shorts for a few years now. They originally had a folded cuff on the legs but being a (cheap) stretch denim is started to warp and look horrible. So as we crafty types do I took this as an opportunity to breath new life into these shorts and give them a distressed hem line and add some holes.
If you haven’t distressed denim before there are plenty of tutorials available on the interwebs that can show you how to do it. The wholes in these shorts where starting to look a bit flabby and sad so, once again instead of sending them off for retirement in denim short heaven I gave them another facelift.
I added some lace. Here’s how I did it…

Lace – There aren’t that many rules when picking your lace. I chose this navy blue because the back of the shorts have a navy stitch on the pockets (which you will see soon…) plus I wanted something that would stand out and not be to subtle but at the same time wouldn’t scream DIY job either.
Sewing needle – Any ordinary sewing needle will do the trick.
Thread – Choose one close to the colour of your lace and one that will blend into the colour of the denim.
Scissors – Just to cut the lace and thread. Again don’t need anything special
Shorts – Pick a pair with holes already in them or make some holes using a craft knife and some sandpaper. Again no rules to the holes. Make as many or as few as you like.

Step 1

Cut a piece of lace to the size of the shorts on your pocket.

Step 2

Make sure you are happy with where the lace is sitting and pin it to the pocket.

I didn’t use pins. I thought Meh, it’s only a small job, it will be fine. Learn from my ignorance…

Pins will make this process much easier. 🙂

Step 3

Stitch the lace onto the front of the pocket. Keep one hand inside the pocket to be sure you don’t sew through to the back side of the pocket. We want to keep the pockets functional. 😉

Step 4

Use the lighter coloured thread to put a few small tack stitches to hold the pocket in place. You might not need this step depending on your shorts. If I didn’t tack mine down the pockets pop out the holes. Not what I wanted… Try to add the stitches to spots that will be easily covered by the frayed edges of the hole.

TIP: The smaller the stitches on the front the less visible they will be.

Do the same with all of the holes on the pockets.

If you have holes in spots that don’t have a pocket backing just stitch directly onto the denim. You can do this for all of your holes. I added the lace to the pockets because I wanted the white of the pockets to sit evenly under the lace.

TA-DA! Pretty simple huh. I’ve been meaning to do this for so long. I’m pretty happy with how they have turned out but I think I might add some white lace to the hem… maybe.

What do you think?

Have you edited some of your favourite clothes to save them from retirement?

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