Tear-away Goat Pants

Pants are great! But so is freedom. Maybe you want to wear pants in the morning and maybe you want them to be goat pants. But up until now you had to stick with those decisions for the rest of the day. NO MORE!

I present to you tear-away goat pants.

I made these for myself and two of my friends because we are going to be fauns this Halloween. I wasn't sure what size they were so I decided to get a lot of help from using velcro. And man was I pleased with the results!

Let's get started!

• 1 yard goat pelt or goaty fur fabric
• 2 1/2 ft of 2" width velcro tape
• 2 1/2 ft of 1" width velcro tape
• Sewing machine and thread
• 3' of thick twine or rope
• 4' of medium twine or nylon string

I found a really basic shorts pattern on google images and eyeballed it. I cut the yard of fabric in half - each half will form one leg of the shorts. One thing that happened by accident but turned out super nice was that I made these with the fur pointing upwards. It protrudes out better if its upside down like that if it's long fur fabric - but that's all up to you.

The two looping cuts go in about 7" and down about 14". I eyeballed it. These aren't Ralph Lauren shorts! You won't get voted off Project Runway. They're tear-away goat shorts! Be bold with your cuts and don't look back.

If you decide to do a smaller cut on one side, flip the finished side fur up on top of your other half of fabric to use as a stencil. That way they'll be mirrored.

Start by sewing two mirrored sides together from the top down. I think I chose the slightly smaller curved cut sides as the butt but I didn't really know if that was the right choice. It worked.

I hand stitched at the beginning as you can see in the first picture. That's because I hadn't learned how to use the sewing machine at that point. If you don't have a sewing machine it probably won't take that long to hand stitch these whole shorts. I had to make 3 pairs so the machine was really nice to speed things up.

Anyways - stitch all the way down the curved line down to the crotch. Leave the legs unstitched. Leave that to the velcro!

Even though these shorts are tear-away, I added a belt for a little extra security. They would work without it though if you're one of those people who wants to be able to tear them away at a moment's notice (and I hope you are!).

Measure out some twine long enough so you can tie a knot with it around your waist like a belt.

Wrap some gaffers tape (the best tape) around the tips so it won't fray.

Tape twine down to top of shorts so it stays put. Then fold fur about an inch over twine to create a channel. This will be your drawstring.

Sew the channel being very careful not to sew twine into the stitches. If you do it won't be able to tighten!

Start by just measuring about 10-12 inches of the 2" wide velcro for each of the back of the legs. This will go on the fur side. Cut the lengths and then just stick on for now. Then cut a 14 inch length of the 1" wide velcro and stick along the front seam on the fur side.

Now you can stitch the velcro on with the machine or by hand. If you are using a machine the needle may get gunked up from the adhesive from the velcro. Clean this out often because it will mess stuff up.

Measure out and cut two 8-9 inch lengths of the 2" velcro and stick to the outer edges of the non-fur side of the fabric. Then cut out a 14 inch length of the 1" wide velcro and stick it to the non-fur side of the front seam. Now stitch it all on! If you are seeing the the seams in the fur don't fret. If you pick at the fur around the seems you can hide them.

I added small channels at the bottom of the legs and threaded through small nylon strings so that I could tighten the shorts at the bottom. I threaded through with a knitting needle. Totally optional.