Tops: knit and woven

 It's always fun to make a new dress but really when I analyze my sewing output it's the tops that get the most use. So I decided to dive into the stash and use up both some fabric from the stash and a new arrival. 

First up the stash fabric. This is a cotton and silk blend voile that I ordered from Mood Fabrics maybe two years ago? I was 54" wide so I only ordered 1 yard thinking I would make a summer top. But now that summer is coming to an end I decided to make a slightly more season spanning top. Only slightly, as it is very light and floaty, this fabric is dreamy. 

And I'm wearing it with my favorite denim skirt made a few years ago. At the time I called it the best skirt pattern ever and it hasn't been surpassed although I just recently bought the Anzu cargo skirt from Waffle patterns which seems like the perfect travel item.

The key to this pattern is a really lightweight fabric, it needs to gather softly in the front and then the neckband is a wide bias piece. 

 

I've sewn this top pattern 3 times now, and there will probably be more. It's from the Burdastyle Feb 2018 issue No. 120, although each time I've made it with very much shorter sleeves. Elbow length sleeves drive me crazy, they always get bunched up inside jacket sleeves. Here's the first version, and the second. 

It does wrinkle a lot, after being tucked in it was very crumpled but it pressed perfectly. So I guess this is not one of those tops that you start the day tucked in and then change that up later. 

Top Number 2 is something that caught my as soon as I saw the preview for the preview of the June 2020 issue. I love things with square necklines.  You might notice, same day - quick change for blog photos :) 

I kept looking at this fabric on the Girl Charlee website and finally decided I had to try it plus the price was too good to pass up. The colors are just perfect with my wardrobe. It's a rib knit which I haven't used much, and now that I've worn it a couple of times I will go back and make it a bit tighter around the waist and hem as it's too loose there. 

Here's the pattern image from the BurdaStyle magazine, the pattern is June 2021 No. 108.

You can see that I didn't do the peplum version (no thank you!) nor the side gathers, I just made it a regular T-shirt. This pattern will go into my "to be remade" file as it's just right for an interesting knit top and I could change the sleeve design to make it more interesting. 

I'm very happy with how the stripes turned out, I could have done some matching of the shoulder inset piece but I thought it might look weird, and they they would show up as separate pieces. The shoulder piece is at a slight angle anyway.  One fit note I have is that I narrowed the center front part of the neckline by about 1/2"  by pinching out 1/4" on either side of the center front fold line before cutting out. I could just tell that the neckline would be too wide on me as most are. I could even take out a tiny bit more for my next version. 

And in other news, I am smiling because we are back to in-person classes at Hello Stitch Studio. Although most of our classes scheduled for Oct-Dec are almost full or sold out!  People are ready to get back to doing things and I couldn't agree more. Fortunately we have a very high vax rate here in the bay area as well as people mostly being careful (sensible) about masking etc. So it's just very wonderful to feel some normalcy returning and I hope it stays that way. 

 

I do have an online class starting in October, which is Intro to Tailoring: Make your own Blazer. That will be on weeknights Tues/Thurs 6-7:30pm. And it's not pattern specific, so you can use any pattern you would like.

Other than that I'm trying to do some painting projects around my house now that it's not a thousand degrees every day (exaggeration but 110ºF does not make you want to do fix-it projects). We are all crossing our fingers and hoping for a calm fire season - the ones currently burning in N. California are terrible enough but at least in the bay area the air has not been like last year, with the famous orange days. October is actually the most windy month when a lot of fires have started. On a more positive note the Giants are in the race for the playoffs and we are hoping for weeks more of baseball in San Francisco. 

Happy Sewing,

Beth

Today's garden photo, these dahlias which grow about 3 feet tall but the flowers are quite small. The color is so nice. I've had almost no blooms on my dahlias this summer and I have to try some different ones next year.