I've made a new top. It is a plain little top, but to my eyes the lovely thing about it is the fabric; a beautifully soft cotton gauze, and the charming hand-painted look to its print.
A short story...
About a month ago I was meeting with some friends, and one friend was a little late. When she arrived, she explained that on the way she had spotted a cute top in the window of a shop, and just had to screech to a stop and check it out. She tried it on and then bought it, totally on the spur of the moment. We all duly admired the top and chatted about the pros and cons of spontaneous vs carefully planned purchases. Important, life altering stuff, I know!
Anyway, after our get-together, which happened to be in Glyde Street where Calico and Ivy is situated, I popped in to check out the offerings. Saw the range of nani IRO double gauze, fell hopelessly in love all over again, as I always do when I go in and see it there. It occurred to me that maybe I could buy myself a little top too. Except of course that my version of buying a little top is buying a piece of fabric. Inspired by my friend I just decided to spontaneously go for it.
And bammo, new top! Woot!
I wanted the print to be the star so wanted for a very plain, simple and relaxed silhouette. I used New Look 6483, one of my really old old old tried and trues that I’ve had for many years. Not exciting, but a real goodie nonetheless. There are probably tonnes of patterns identical to this one.
This print is called Painting Check. My very favourite thing of all about it is the way the print fades away towards the selvedge and I wanted to use this feature as a sort of “border print”, although obviously it isn’t actually a border print but the complete opposite. It’s a reverse border print!
But I like ideas that are turned on their head so it’s definitely my kind of border print. To keep this feature firmly in focus I left the selvedges unhemmed. It's an uncommon choice but I think it works really well for this particular fabric, and I really like how it looks!
The two body pieces are cut from one selvedge edge and the two sleeves were cut from the other. The sleeves still have the fabric ID on them, which I find quite charming.
There was only 1m left on the roll, which wasn’t quite enough for the hip width required for my pattern pieces. So I cut them as wide as possible and just left the side seams open in a slit from the lower waist down.
Side, sleeve and shoulder seams are flat-felled, the armscye seam is overlocked and the neckline is finished with a narrow strip of bias cut cotton voile, stitched, understitched and then topstitched.
Details:
Top; New Look 6483, nani IRO double gauze “painting check”
Shorts; Burda 7723, white linen, details and my review of this pattern here
Thongs; Havaianas
