Super superheroes!

Do you ever have a moment where fabric calls to you?  By 'calls' I don't just mean the impulse to BUY ALL THINGS when you walk into a fabric store (because that happens to me all. the. time), but that moment when you see a fabric and know that you must have it, and know exactly what it's going to become.  I had one of those moments a couple weeks ago when I was perusing the Jo-Ann's weekly direct mail flyer, of all places!  Usually I just browse to see if there are any big sales on patterns or arts & crafts supplies - I run a weekly small group arts & crafts club - but I rarely look at the fabrics.  I'm afraid years of going to quilt stores with my mom has turned me into a bit of a fabric snob.  At any rate, there was a sale on licensed fabrics including Marvel superhero fabrics.  I saw this one and knew it was destined to become a dirndl skirt.

Avengers and uh...other Marvel heroes - assemble!

Coincidentally, Gertie has a great dirndl skirt tutorial over at the Blog for Better Sewing, so I just had to buy the fabric.  On my son's suggestion, I paired the fabric with a gold zipper, which I think gives it that little bit of extra superhero bad-assness (bad-assery?)

I bought 2 yards of fabric, which was more than enough for my project. The fabric is 44" wide, which means I was able to cut two strips the width of the fabric and 27" high.  I cut two waistband pieces 30" long and 2" high.  I hemmed the skirt to 22" - the deep hem lets the skirt hang nicely.

Here's a pic of the finished result:

I had quite a lot of fabric left over - I almost always buy extra - so I decided to make a pair of shorts for my son.  All of my children's patterns are for babies and toddlers, which, despite my delusions to the contrary, he is neither anymore (hello first grade!)  I found a great tutorial on drafting boys' pants based on a pair of existing pants over at Schwin &Schwin.  I grabbed a pair of my son's pants, busted out a roll of the kids' art paper and got to tracing.  I widened the leg openings a bit, as I'm pretty sure that even though skinny jeans are 'in', skinny shorts are not.

One of my favorite things about the Schwin & Schwin tutorial is the faux fly detail.  One thing I really didn't want was for these shorts to look like pajama shorts.  You know the kind - one pattern piece per leg with a fully elasticized waist.

My son is at the age where he loves to have pockets for his "treasures" - pennies, acorns, rocks, etc. - so I added some front pockets.  I had some left over binding from my walkaway dress, which I though would make a fun pocket, belt loops, and waistband accent.

These shorts were quite quick to make, they took me just over two days.  I probably could've cranked them out in one if I would've been kid-free for a day.

Here's the "modeled" shot of the shorts...

He wasn't really in the mood to have his picture taken.

...and here they are in action on the way to the National Aquarium. 

Siblings striking a pose.

Now, I just have to be careful that we don't accidentally go all matchy-matchy, since my skirt and his shorts have become our "go-to" wardrobe items.  Of course, this has already happened, but I'm trying to keep it to a minimum.  I will say that the skirt has become quite the conversation starter - I wore it on a date night with TMS and got many (positive) comments from passers-by, and when I wore it to Jo-Ann's the other day, I gained a fan in a little nearly-3 year old boy there with his mom to buy fabric for superhero capes - he was having a superhero themed birthday party.  And really, how can you NOT feel awesome wearing this type of skirt?

My next thought is to do a whole Avengers-themed series of dirndl skirts...is that overdoing it?  I don't think so!  As a bonus, I get to represent Antman and Wasp, who were totally left out of the Avengers movie franchise (for shame, Whedon!)