Staying Cool in Love Notions Allegro Shorts

I have been so busy sewing tops and dresses all summer that I have neglected a major need in my closet – bottoms. I had to fix this; so, over the past few weeks, I have been sewing shorts. The first pattern I pulled out of my pattern library was the Allegro pattern from Love Notions.

I purchased the Love Notions Allegro pattern when it released a year ago and was so excited to live in them all summer long last year. At the time, though, I was in my first trimester of pregnancy and still utterly exhausted. I powered through making my first pair while my kids were at VBS one morning and loved the way they looked finished. However, when I tried my shorts on, my stomach had already outgrown the shorts. I put them in the rapidly growing pile in my closet of clothes that did not fit. It seemed that everything that was not a stretchy knit was going into that same pile.

I had my sweet baby in January and have had a few months to shrink back to normal. So, when the warm months set in, I tried them on, and they fit! Here I am (in this photo below) wearing them on Instagram during Me Made May this year with my Anna shirt that I blogged about here. They fit great and were absolute LOVE. I made these first shorts out of an Amy Butler Sateen Fabric in the Lark Collection called Ivy Bloom. The cotton sateen is a medium weight twill fabric.

Fast forward to July, and I knew I needed to make another pair of these shorts. I had some rayon challis from Sly Flox left over from the Havana dress that I made in June. The scrap was just enough to squeeze out another pair of Allegro shorts in.

Fabric

I love that this pattern not only works for medium weight fabrics (like the sateen I used for my first pair) but that it also works for those lighter weight woven fabrics that I have left over from making other clothes. Most of my patterns for woven bottoms really need a bottom weight fabric to look right.  Rayon challis is a lighter weight apparel fabric that I normally think of for tops and dresses. It works wonderful for this pattern, though. It flows just right and gives these shorts such a comfortable feel.