I confess that I once thought that I could never be very interested in boys’ fashion. I thought that boys’ clothes were very boring, compared to the dresses and things that girls wear.

How wrong I was, back then in my 20s. On the contrary, boys’ clothes are just as, if not more interesting than girls’ clothing. Just look through any sewing book and you will see that clothes for boys are often highly detailed and elaborate pieces of work. They involve more work than a simple skirt or dress because they usually have contrasting pieces of fabric detailing all over the place.

I also never thought I could like skulls and pirates or shooting machines. Or swords. Or boy shows like Ben10. I was obviously living in some kind of weird, sheltered bubble, to be so blind. I like all that stuff (not so much the guns, but neither does Matthew for that matter).

Anyway, my fabric choice today is this piece of pirate cotton that I bought at Spotlight. I made Matthew a pair of pants, using my favourite pattern from my favourite kids’ clothing pattern book.

I have 30cm leftover to make other things with. I only needed 70cm for the shorts. I tend to overbuy!

I think that stripes are fabulous for boys – and girls (though I lean more towards florals for my girls) – and I like the colours used: blue, white, red and black match nicely.

For Matt’s shorts, I used a red fabric to complement the pirate fabric for the cuffs and pockets. Whilst the colour was a great choice, the material was not: it is polyester. It slipped about in my machine and it was difficult to sew straight. It has rubbed up during machine washing. I could unpick and replace the red panels, but I won’t. Matt loves these shorts and wears them a lot, usually with his pirate or robot t-shirt (which I think are very cool indeed!).