I’ve made some shorts from a bengaline remnant that I’ve had in my stash for a couple of years.

I’m not sure they are the most flattering shorts – now I look at the photographs I think they may be a bit long, and perhaps a bit wide at the knee, but I fashioned them from a couple of different patterns, so this might be expected.

I didn’t have a lot of fabric to play with, so I used a hybrid of StyleArc Wendy pants and Flat Bottom Flo pants. I wanted the flat bottom adjustment but the Wendy pants have got a wide band at the top which I thought would be nice, not that you can see it.

I added a false cuff at the bottom as they looked a bit meh just hemmed.

I made these shorts today to celebrate my first day of long service leave. For those of you not from Australia, long service leave was enacted in 1958 to enable migrants to take a holiday back in their home country. This was in the days before air travel was common and sea journeys took weeks. It is a national entitlement and, depending on your workplace agreement, seems to give 13 weeks of paid leave for every seven or ten years of service. This is in addition to annual leave. Sooo, I have worked for the same organisation for 35 years and we used to get LSL every seven years under our award (this has just changed to ten years), so do the maths!! I am taking five months leave from today, which means I don’t go back to work until July. Hmm, I need more casual clothes I think, so this is the first make of my leave.

During my leave I am going to do some serious house cleaning, and do some serious stashbusting. I started working my way through my box of knit scraps last night, cutting it up to knit a rag rug. I cut up one of Bridgette’s old t-shirts, plus lots of my scraps and finished up with several piles like this.

I have started knitting the strips of fabric, just knotting them together to make continuous yarn. Archie thinks I should give this away, but it might be useful for camping as it is totally washable. It looks like this:

I did have a notion that I would take this to knit on the plane to Sydney next week, but it it surprisingly heavy and doesn’t not compress into a neat bundle, so I might have to rethink that plan.

The details: Black bengaline shorts made from a combination of StyleArc Wendy and Flat bottom Flo pants. Top is the Bellini from Capital Chic Patterns blogged here. Sandals are Torretti from Marie Claire.