Years ago, I remember seeing someone on Instagram complaining about the fit of the LearnMYOG Do It All Shorts (DIAS), particularly the fit around the butt. Today, I’m breaking down my experience with the pattern to help you address and troubleshoot those exact fit issues.
A quick note on pattern sizing: If you find this pattern’s sizing as massively limiting as I did, I highly recommend checking out the Sierra Short from Road Trip Pattern Co. I’ve already bought the pattern, and it’s next on my queue of shorts to test.
Analyze Style and Fit
Based on the Patagonia Baggies, the LearnMYOG Do It All Shorts feature a casual, straight leg fit paired with a full length crotch gusset. What does the full length crotch gusset do? It lets you run, jump, squat, and climb trees without a rigid central crotch seam trying to slice you in half. By placing a continuous strip of fabric through the inseam, you completely eliminate that high friction cross seam intersection.
That said, the design has a few quirks worth noting. The pocket bags are anchored directly into both the waistband and the bottom hem to keep them from floating around. While this prevents pocket bunching during activity, it makes stepping into the shorts a bit awkward, since it’s easy to catch your foot in the gap between the shorts body and the pocket bag. On top of that, if your main fabric and pocketing fabric shrink at different rates (even after pre washing), the pocket will pull on the hem, causing the shorts to pucker or warp.
The pattern also claims a standard rise, but in practice, these sit as a mid to low rise garment. It comes with two inseam options: 5″ and 7″.
Sizing
I’m 5’11”, 175 lbs, with a 45 inch lower torso using the measuring band method. My body is going through changes with my weight lifting, so when I measure using a tape measure, I’m 43 inches today.
Typically, for most patterns, I’d be completely safe going with size 46. But when I made the muslin, I was drowning in fabric.
I’m not sure what I was thinking, honestly, because I then went down two sizes and made a toile in size 40. I couldn’t even get the shorts over my mid thigh.
In the end, the Goldilocks principle prevailed, and size 43 turned out to be the correct size.
When we look at the finished garment, the hip has 4.5 inches of ease. That’s a lot, so I thought it would help to visually break down ease in a garment to make it easier to understand.
Garment Ease at the Hips
ℹ️ I want you to notice what happens to the bottom of the crotch curve as the ease in the pattern increases.
Slim fit jeans can range anywhere from 0 to 1 inches of positive ease, depending on whether the fabric has any spandex or elastane added. This means the circumference of the final garment at the hip level is either the same as, or 1 inch larger than, your body circumference.
The standard slack with no darts typically has 2 to 3 inches of positive ease.
Once you start adding front pleats to the pants, you can increase the amount of ease across the hips to 3 to 4 inches.
The standard, baggy, cargo short has about 4 to 6 inches of ease.
And then there’s the emo in me that can’t ignore the super trendy fashion coming out of Japan, where they go way past 8+ inches of ease.
Notice how the more ease there is in the pattern at the hip level, the lower and further away the crotch curve gets from the body. More ease at the hips means those shorts can sit lower on the body. Going back to the DIAS pattern, which has 4.5 inches of ease and fits more like cargo shorts, it’s designed so the bottom of the crotch curve sits further away from the body than slacks or jeans would. Keep this in mind as I go over the fit on my body.
Picking a Size
In the end, I think the best way to pick a size for this pattern is based on the waistband (no elastic) circumference of the final garment. In practice, this means you’ll be able to get the elastic waistband over your hips, and that’s really all that matters.
Trying to figure out your size based on hip circumference and final garment ease alone might lead you astray, so make sure you use both the final waistband size and the garment ease together to determine your size.
Let’s go over my mistake. I typically use my lower torso as measured with the measuring band to pick a size, since it accounts for my stomach and the room I’ll need through the crotch curve. Using my hip circumference alone often leads to pants that are too small for my body shape. My lower torso is 45 inches, and my hips alone are 43 inches.
At size 46, the finished garment is 50.5 inches at the hip, which is 7.5 inches of ease compared to my 43 inch hips. That’s way too much. So even though my lower torso measures 45 inches, putting me between size 43 and 46, size 46 is definitely too big given the amount of ease in the pattern.
At size 40, the finished garment is 44.5 inches at the hip, and I thought 1.5 inches of ease compared to my 43 inch hips would be enough if I used stretchy fabric. But the 42.5 inch waist was never going to fit over my hips, and that should have immediately ruled out size 40 if I’d been paying attention. I wasn’t.
Size 43 finished garment has plenty of ease, roughly 4.5 inches, and the waistband, at 45.5 inches, goes over my hips easily.
Fabric
I’ve found only three different sources of Nylon Taslan/Talson/Supplex fabric: Carr Textiles, Ripstop by the Roll, and Mind the MAKER. I’m pretty sure all of the 4 ply Taslan you find here in the United States (Mood Fabrics, Raspberry Creek Fabrics, Salt Lake Sewciety, and so on) comes from Carr Textiles, and you can actually buy directly from the mill at SellFabric.com. They label them differently, but it can’t be a coincidence that the available colors are all the same across stores. It’s all from Carr Textiles.
If you don’t like those colors, you can always try the 3.4 oz Nylon Taslan/Supplex from Ripstop by the Roll. I’ll point out, though, that lighter colors aren’t going to be 100% opaque, so you’ll want to stick with only dark colors.
I also found a third source. As it turns out, Taslan is spelled Taslon in Europe and the UK, and Mind the MAKER offers Trevor Taslon. Trevor Taslon is a high tech fabric designed for durability and comfort. The tight weave blocks wind and is lightly water repellent, making it ideal for outdoor clothing and accessories. You can find Trevor Taslon at Minerva and many other places online. My shorts are made from the Sienna colorway.
Adjustments
ℹ️ First, the pattern has an error: the front waistband notch along the side seam is in the wrong location and needs to be lowered. Always double check notches on your patterns.
I talked a bit more about center grainline placement on shorts and checking balance in a previous post, so I’ll just briefly say here that trying to check pattern balance on shorts is impossible and pointless if you don’t have the full length version of the pattern, which means we can skip that discussion. We also don’t need to find the center grainline, because we can still check for balance issues another way.
The first alteration I made was to raise the waistband 1 inch. This is unusual for me, since I have a short torso and almost always lower the waistband on patterns instead. I wouldn’t consider this pattern regular rise so much as low rise. I had trouble figuring out waistband placement at first, because I normally wear the bottom of the crotch curve closer to my body, but even the size 46 crotch hook length was too short. Once I looked more closely at how the shorts are designed, I realized the bottom of the crotch curve sits lower than it would on standard trouser patterns, which is why I showed earlier how the crotch curve moves further from the body as ease increases. These shorts actually fit better if you let the bottom of the crotch hook sit away from your body. Once I did that, I understood that the waistband was really low rise, not standard rise.
The next adjustment was fixing the center grainline placement on the back piece only.
I did this by cutting along the crotchline on the back piece, then sliding the bottom portion of the back piece toward the side seam by 5/8 inches.
From there, I redrew my side seam from the crotchline of the top portion down to the hemline of the bottom portion, and did the same for the inseam, drawing from the crotchline of the top portion down to the hemline of the bottom portion.
Altered (in purple)
The alteration ultimately removes fabric from the inseam and adds fabric to the outseam below the crotchline. With that in mind, let’s look at the actual fit of the shorts to see why the shift was necessary.
Fit
From the back, you can see fabric cupping underneath my butt. The pattern clearly has enough ease and fits overall, so this issue isn’t about size, it’s about the shape of the pattern needing adjustment for my body. Once I shifted the center grainline, the fabric no longer pooled underneath my butt, and the shorts hang straight off my body instead. The change might not look dramatic in the final garment, but I know the alteration still mattered. If I hadn’t shifted the grainline, the inseams of my shorts would sit closer together, or even touch, because the fabric would swing inward instead of hanging straight.
From the side view, you can see my underwear showing, which confirms I really did need to raise the waistline 1 inch, even with my short torso.
I didn’t need to adjust the center grainline placement on the front pattern piece, but the difference still shows how much grainline placement matters. On the original pattern, it looks like my shorts are rubbing together along the inseam, and the sensation while wearing them is almost like the legs are trying to twist as I move. The result is shorts that crawl up toward the crotch, which is awful. Once I fixed the grainline on the back, the shorts hang away from each other in both the final muslin and the final garment. I no longer feel any twisting or pulling with movement, which helps keep the dreaded crotch goblin away.
Out in the Wild
Personal Aside
School starts in a week, and I can’t believe summer is over already. This hasn’t been a great summer, with the pitiful snowfall we had over the winter leading to lots of dry trees, minimal wildflowers, and hot, smoky weather. I don’t have high hopes that fall will be much better. The wildfires are going to keep being a problem, and I refuse to go outside when air quality is bad. My poor lungs don’t need to suffer any more than they already have.
One of the things we bought this summer was an air quality monitor from AirGradient, which I was then able to add to my Home Assistant dashboard. And yes, it’s currently hot and smoky outside.
It’s been nice to see the air quality at our house directly, since the closest monitors to us are several miles away and where we live is a bit of an odd location. We have vastly different weather than even 5 miles north or south of us, and air quality changes dramatically. Having our own monitor has been awesome.
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