A Close Call

Faye from Faye's Sewing Adventures is currently having a Tops That Pop sew along.  I decided to participate so I made the below red and navy striped top.  The fabric is a cotton jersey purchased from Mood.  The fabric is medium weight and has stretch but not very much stretch.  I was originally inspired by the top made by Lori from Girls in the Garden.  It is just so cute on her!

Self-drafted knit top with Ginger Skinny Jeans

I originally made a simple fitted T-shirt top but when I put it on, I discovered that I cut the armholes in too deep (think narrow shoulder adjustment gone wild).  This resulted in the sleeve being too tight along the sleep cap and there was pulling across my upper chest since the sleeves were pulling out at that area.  The top was uncomfortable.  (This is a self-drafted pattern.  I made a mistake - oops!)

As I was considering whether to declare it a wadder, I realized that I could save the top by making it a cold shoulder top.  The armhole was just right for that type of top.  So I unstitched the sleeve cap of the sleeves and folded it down.  I basted down the sleeve cap and then topstitched from the front along one of the navy stripes.  I then cut away the excess.    For the sleeve hem, I wanted as much sleeve as possible so I folded it up by only 1/4 inch and topstitched from the right side.  This alteration alleviated the pulling across the sleeve and upper chest and now this top was suddenly a fun on trend top.

Jersey fabric curls to the wrong side and that is what the fabric was doing along the exposed armhole edge.  To prevent this from happening, I fused a strip of fusible tape along the armhole edge.  I did not want to make the armhole go in any deeper by turning it under so instead, I used a decorative stitch along the edge to further stabilize the armhole and also help keep the tape in place should it ever loosen in the wash.

I used a strip of the same fabric for the neck finish and I attached it using the technique described in a previous post.  For my figure, I always need to sew darts even for knits so I used the method described in a previous post, Sewing Darts in Knits.  I used a ball point needle and a stitch length close to 3.0.  I serged the side seams and neck band.

This top was not the look I originally wanted but I am nevertheless happy with how it turned out.  Sometimes mistakes bring about the best results!

Happy Sewing!