Things That Make Me Smile

 

With an impending camping holiday looming, it was time to make sure my camping wardrobe was in order.  Despite living in dresses and skirts at this time of year, a camping holiday requires a change of wardrobe and indeed lifestyle.  Instead of clock watching and timetables, camping requires more of a laid back approach to dressing and indeed living.  No clocks or timetables required and certainly no skirts or heels .  My camping wardrobe involves, shorts, swimwear, tops (usually without sleeves), jandals, sneakers and one warm outfit for the odd inclement day and cooler evenings.

Initially I had the remnants of my Megan Nielsen skirt ear marked for another skirt but decided, given the lovely rtw floral shorts I had seen this season, that this is what this piece of leftover fabric was destined for.  I, unsurprisingly chose Sewaholic Thurlow as the pattern for these shorts because as far as comfort goes these shorts are fantastic.  The only problem was, that I did not have quite enough fabric to complete the project.  Fortunately, the old op shop fabric stash came to the rescue in the form of some lovely black light weight linen.  I decided that the waist band was to be cut in this linen, but how to tie the two fabric together without looking like a mismatched cobbled together pair of shorts.  The answer came in the form of some over sized belt loops.  The addition of the larger than usual belt loops, I feel, draws the eye away from the solid coloured waist band.  I also used the plain black for the pocket bags and only used my lovely print fabric for the bits that were on show.

Because I was desperately short of fabric, I did not have enough even to make some welt pockets and I felt that the addition of these would actually make the back look a little busy anyway.  I hemmed the shorts using a 12cm rolled hem and then folded them back by 4cm before stay stitching them at the side seams.

I realise when I look at this photo now that the waist band looks puckered but actually this is a trick of the camera and the waistband does actually sit perfectly flat....or maybe it is my ironing skills, ironing being my least favourite chore and all!

These shorts are the perfect fit and I always feel when I wear shorts made in this pattern that it was actually designed just for me.  I guess that is the measure of the perfect pattern.

I don't know whether you noticed but these shorts featured in my Making It Work post a couple of days ago.  These shorts were in regular rotation during my holiday.