Hi Sewists! If you’ve been following along you’ll know I’m making myself some denim shorts. I’m on track to get them done in time for the London Pride celebrations.

It started with this pocket…

You can catch up with parts 1, 2 & 3 here…

Back pockets

Flat-felling yoke & back seam

Front pockets

Now it’s time to put the fronts together. For this you need the two front leg pieces, the left fly facing, the fly shield and a zip. Ideally, you want your zip just the right length to line the stop up to the mark on the facing/ shield and the top to finish just below the waist seam. More on that in a minute.

Prepare the fly facing (I’ve already interfaced mine) by finishing the curved edge. I usually just overlock it, you could bias-bind it too, but for some reason I chose to clip and turn the seams and stitch them down. In retrospect this wasn’t the best option as it created a bit too much bulk later on. I’d go with zigzagging or overlocking in the future if the fabric is on the thick side.

I should mention here that when I added the seams to this pattern, I added an extra 5mm to the centre front at the fly opening. Before sewing the left fly facing on, I trim the extra 5mm off the left front piece. This gives me a bit more room on the right to make sure the zip is completely hidden.

The fly facing gets sewn onto the left front. Then the front pieces are sewn together along that short curve.

(eek, nasty thread nests! I REALLY need to service my machine!)

Then to get ready for the zip I fold and press 5mm over on the right-front-piece… this is a good time to finish the bottom of this seam (I overlocked it… you’ll see that in a bit).

Prepare the fly-shield… I sewed the bottom curve and overlocked the straight edge this time. Sew the zip to the fly shield, facing up and along the straight edge.

If you have a plastic zip, line the bottom up and sew the top into the waist seam later on to cut off the excess inside the waistband. You can do this with a metal zip too by carefully handwinding the machine over the zip teeth when the waistband goes on, but this method always puts my heart in my mouth! I’ve recently discovered the fun sport of ‘Zip-Wrestling’ and have found the courage to shorten them myself! Check out this blog post if you want to see how!

Position the fly shield so that the zip is lined up to the front edge and use your zip foot to sew it all together close to the teeth. I’ve also topstitched the left facing to the inside. (There’s that finished crotch seam too…!)

Now to get the zip attached to the left side. Lay the fronts flat and pin the fly in place…

Then carefully fiddle around so that you can pin the zip tape to the left fly facing only – without disturbing the arrangement. Sew this down, it doesn’t need to be too near the zip teeth here, thankfully.

Then, with the right fly shield pinned out of the way, mark, pin and sew the left fly facing in place, from the front with topstitching thread.

I ended up with a bit too much bulk and couldn’t get the needle through all the way to the end, but it is secure and looks fine from any polite distance. I finished off by adding two rows of topstitching to the crotch seam and a bar-tack to hold the shield and facing together.

There, now that should do the trick. Hopefully I’ll get the main seams and the waistband done in my next session.

Until then, Happy Sewing!

Notes to self;

  • Try to work out how I’m going to live without my sewing machine while it gets serviced.
  • Don’t blame the machine all the time… sew more steadily & tidily!
  • Try making the fly facing and shield out of lighter weight fabric to avoid bulky seams…?
  • Eek, where are my rivets…?!