Star Wars Cargo Shorts & Pool Noodle Lightsabers

In addition to his Captain Rex tee, O asked me to make him cargo shorts with crossed lightsabers on the pockets to wear to his birthday party.  So I did.

I used the Hot Scott Cargo Shorts pattern.  Honestly, I wasn't crazy about it.  She notes that the sizes run big, which I found unusual for an independent pattern company.  I measured O and found that he was just slightly bigger than the 5T (he wears a 7 or 7X in RTW), but there was a huge jump in sizing for the 6, so I made the 5T with a 3/8" seam allowance instead of 5/8".  This proved to be unnecessary.  The shorts are big.  Very, very big.  Hopefully he'll still be a fan of Star Wars for several more years.  I also thought the directions could have been more clearly written and that using plaid fabric for the black & white instructional photos was a poor choice.

That being said, O liked the shorts.  I used leftover fabric from his swim bag for the hip pockets.  It amuses me to have Vader peeking out of the one.

I intended to sew down the lightsabers on the cargo pockets, but when I realized how tiny I'd made them  and just how late at night it had gotten to be by that point, I decided to take my chances with Steam-A-Seam 2's claim of a permanent bond.

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In action

I also made some of the ubiquitous pool noodle lightsabers for the guests.  I was pleasantly surprised by how quick and easy it was to make them.  Usually the projects that I think will be fast take the longest!  A serrated knife cut the pool noodles in half easily, then I used shiny silver duct tape cut in half lengthwise to cover the bottoms (in Xs, kwim?) and clipped the ends of the tape so it'd curve nicely.  Then covered about 7" up the length with the silver for the handles, added two stripes with black electrical tape and drew on a power button with a red Sharpie.  While I was doing that, O was cutting out an assortment of masks from here and here that we'd printed onto cardstock.

The lightsabers were a huge hit, and most importantly, were painless when you got whacked with one!  They also made a cool -- loud! -- noise if two of them were banged together.