Today I have one of those sods law tales to tell you. I made the top that I'm wearing months ago, wore it a couple of times and it promptly disappeared. I was so upset as I really liked it. I searched for it for ages and eventually I decided it must have been lost when my boyfriend moved house and resigned myself to making another. Literally about 20 minutes after finishing sewing the new top, I discovered the original one hiding in the back of a drawer! Oh well, it has been gifted to a friend and I am going to move on with my new top!
I hadn't realised quite how rumpled I look in these photos, they were taken at the end of my holiday and my linen skirt really could have done with an iron!
On my uni days I am surrounded by 23 well dressed women whose clothes I am always staring at and trying to work out whether they would work on me and how I could recreate them. Thanks girls for the inspiration (sorry boys, I'm not spending much time on your clothes). Anyway there have been a lot of lace tops featuring in the girls' wardrobes recently which I guess is reflective of the summer trends and I really wanted one. And so my next Belcarra blouse was born.
I knew I wanted to have the front piece as a lace panel and originally I was considering creating lace sleeves too but having never sewn with lace before, I thought I would keep my life simple and just stick with the front panel so that I didn't need to worry about working out how to hem the lace.
The main fabric is a cotton jersey that I bought from Simply Fabrics in Brixton and the lace was an offcut that I bought on the same trip. Although the Belcarra pattern is not meant for stretch fabrics I thought I would give it a go and it seems to have worked. I simply tacked the lace panel to the jersey front piece and then just sewed following the instructions. The only part I changed was that I eliminated the sleeve bands as I wasn't crazy about them on my first version and also I wanted slightly shorter sleeves.
Now does anyone have any other suggestions for top patterns? I'm always on the look out for good tops, I don't know why but I really find this the hardest pattern to find to suit my body type.
Have you seen the dimpsy T by Laura After Midnight (http://lauraaftermidnight.com/2015/05/the-dimpsy-t/). I'm not sure it works for me (although poor fabric choice didn't help) as even though its apparently drafted for a D cup (hope I remembered that right) I still need an FBA and can't work out how to do one with the odd dart shape. However, Thimberlina has made a couple (https://thimberlina.wordpress.com/2015/09/11/elephants-and-indians/) and I think it would suit you.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for this, it's a really cute top and I hadn't spotted it before.
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