DIY cross shorts.

I’ve recently been going crazy with DIY projects, so I decided to put up a tutorial of my most recent endeavour. Yesterday I made a pair of shorts with black velvet crosses on them, inspired by the Urban outfitters’ shorts on my last post.

You will need:

• Scissors (fabric and paper)
• High waisted jeans
• Velvet fabric of some sort
• Paper
• Bondaweb (can seem pricey but it lasts a long time and is worth it)
• Pins
• Needle and black thread

Firstly buy yourself a pair of cheap high waisted jeans. These were bought at a local charity shop for £3.95 and were perfect for the job.

Then cut the jeans to the correct length that you want, depending on the length of short you’re comfortable wearing. The bottom will fray which is the look I was going for, but if you want a neater finish just hem them using a sewing machine. Remember to cut them a little longer if doing so as creating the hem will make them shorter.

Grab some paper or card and cut out a few different sized crosses. Be creative and experiment with different placing of the crosses until you find a design you like.

Now pin your paper to the velvet and carefully cut the velvet so that it is a tiny bit bigger than the paper cross. Then unpin the paper leaving behind velvet crosses.

Now use a form of fabric bounding, such as bondaweb to stick the crosses on to your shorts where desired. Follow the instructions on the packet. Once all of your crosses are stuck on, stitch around them with black thread. You could use a basic running stitch but I used a backward stitch as it’s usually stronger. You don’t have to  use both bondaweb and sew, but it really will make them last longer.

Finished! A pair of gorgeous shorts which you can pay for with spare change.

Obviously you can use any type of material for the crosses and customize to your taste. I plan on wearing mine to the beach tomorrow!

Thanks for reading guys,

Bethany Paige X