Completed: Ikat Maritime Shorts

Good morning, everyone! I hope y’all had a nice weekend – we spent the holiday driving back from the beach, which was AWESOME – well, the beach I mean, not the drive, ha – but I’m soo happy to be home! Apparently, my cat spent the entire time sulking downstairs and trying to attack my roommate when she would try to feed her. Great job, cat. And you wonder why no one wants to be your friend 😐

ANYWAY, now that the summer heat is in full swing round these parts, I’ve really started rolling with my warm-weather wardrobe. Beginning with shorts, obviously, because ain’t no way I’m trying to wear pants in this humidity.

The pattern I used is the Maritime Shorts from Grainline Studio. I have a long history with this pattern – having made shorts with crazy colors, home decor weight fabric, bicycles, and even some failed jorts. This is a good little workhorse of a pattern, and I love the modern, clean cut (which kind of reminds me of something you’d pull from a JCrew catalog, especially in a printed fabric like those bikes!). They’re also REALLY easy to whip up, Ikat fabric notwithstanding, and can be squeezed out of a fairly paltry yardage. All good things, in my book!

Since I’ve made these so many times before, there’s not too much to comment on construction or fit. I made my usual size, although it needed a bit of pulling in due to my fabric choice (more on that in a sec). I used stretch interfacing for the waistband and fly pieces and shortened the hem as much as I could before the pockets threatened to poke out. Most seams are serged, although there are a few flat-felled seams in where I could manage it. Oh! I also used both of my machines to make this – one threaded with white, one with navy. This meant that I didn’t have to change out the thread over and over, as I did with the skirt. Made sewing these shorts go a LOT faster!

When it came time to sew the fly zipper, I skipped over Jen’s instructions and followed the ones for the Thurlow pants (you can see my sewalong post for those steps here). I don’t know what it is, but the included fly instructions don’t make a lick of sense to me. This seems to be the case for about 50% of sewers who make these shorts – some people think the instructions are awesome, and some of us are just sitting there scratching our butts, confused as shit. Obviously I fall into the latter. Anyway, it’s easy to swap out the directions with something that makes a little more sense to you, so in my case, it’s Thurlow. All good!

If this fabric looks familiar, it’s because I’ve used it before – on another Grainline pattern, no less. This is a stretch cotton twill that I bought from Mood Fabrics aaaaages ago – and have been hanging onto ever since, mostly because I had to work up the courage before I attempted pattern matching again! As with the Moss Mini, pattern matching these shorts was a total and complete bitch. I cut everything on the single layer, but even then it was really really difficult. Matching plaids and stripes is pretty easy – I could do that shit in my sleep at this point – but I had it in my head that I needed to match the print like freaking wallpaper for this piece, so the Ikat pattern runs seamlessly all the way around. I actually did manage to do just that, but not without wasting a shit load of fabric – seriously, I think I started out without about 2 yards, and I just barely had enough to match the back pockets by the time I was done. I kept mis-cutting and it was extremely frustrating. Of course, I have more Ikat lurking in my stash and I’m just side-eyeing it with terror now. I don’t know if I can deal anymore. I just don’t know.

Anyway, I’m happy with how everything turned out – it was totally worth the effort. You’ll notice that my print-matching is not 100% – especially at the center back. This is because I used a twill with a heavy stretch, which rendered the shorts waaaay too big when I sewed them with the normal 1/2″ seam allowance included in the pattern. I tried them on before attaching the waistband, so it was easy to nip in the sides until I got a closer fit, but that meant I had to sacrifice some of my perfect print-matching. The Ikat still runs in a straight line, which is good – it’s just a little interrupted at the sides. The center back looks like a vortex leading straight to hell, but there’s really not much I can do about that, so whatever. At least the back pockets are good, ha.

All in all, I think I pinched out about 1″ off each side before the shorts were finally the right size. Again, this is due to the stretch in the fabric. I’d normally size down for this sort of thing, but I sewed the smallest size so that wasn’t really an option.

I don’t have much else to say about this project, so here are some pictures.

(I totally sewed the hook & eye on with pink thread – I am pretending like it’s a design feature, but in all honesty it’s because I already had a needle threaded with pink thread and I didn’t feel like changing out to white. Ha!)

Notice that the bottom of the fly shield is unfinished – I sewed it in upside-down on accident. This seems to be a running theme for fly shields+me, as it certainly isn’t the first time I’ve made this mistake. Oh well.

Ok, I guess that’s it! So happy to finally bite the bullet and put that Ikat to good use. These shorts turned out really awesome, and they’re much more wearable than the mini skirt was (it’s hard for me to justify wearing something if I can’t comfortably sit on the floor with it on). And they look great with my new coral button-up, so bonus!

In other news, I recently decided to quit drinking coffee for the next couple of weeks – I felt like my caffeine dependency was getting out of hand, so I wanted to try to 0 out and start new. Omg you guys, it is REALLY hard! I am fortunate not to have any withdrawal headaches, but instead I’m just tired and listless and feel a little depressed, which is weird. I’ve also taken way too many naps over the weekend. I’m hoping things will balance out soon and I’ll feel back to my normal self but – ugh. So pardon me if I seem irritable – I’m just under-caffeinated! In the meantime, if you have any tips to help me ease out of this ~trying time~ in my life, I’m open to suggestions! I mostly just miss the taste of coffee. It was like getting a warm hug in the morning.

Tags: completed, Grainline Studio, grumpy LT, ikat, maritime shorts, short, shorts