knitting neels

I might as well continue with my unseasonal sew-and-tell. Contrary to the dress, I only finished up these two wee tops during the week. The first is my nemesis, the Violet blouse by Colette patterns.

You might remember it from before. So many things went wrong for that blouse, I decided to give it another chance. Mostly, what irritates me about that blouse is that the collar doesn’t lie flat and doesn’t behave whatsoever underneath a cardigan or jumper. To be forewarned is to be forearmed so I went forth with my steam iron and interfacing.

I used 1.5m of polyester/possibly polycotton of unknown origin and vintage and some leftover white cotton. It came together extremely quickly but that collar!

It still won’t lie flat completely and there is no hope of enticing it to behave with a cardigan. Rather than be disappointed, which I am a little, I have decided to file this one away under learning about collars. For a start, the top is clearly designed to be worn without anything over it because moving your arms anything more than buttering some bread or stirring your tea causes the top part to move erratically. This does not help keep a collar in check. I had the same problem with the Jasmine top. I figured out in the course of my manipulations that the collar does not seem to have any allowance in it for the ‘roll’, meaning that it doesn’t overlap a neckband very well. And most importantly, I realised that the shape of one’s shoulders affects the lay of a collar such as this completely. In the modelled pictures, the model has much shoulder than I do. I have too much fabric in the collar at the front because of this. In an effort to solve this post-sewing, I pressed the collar into a position that folds that excess fabric away and then put tiny hand stitching in to keep its shape. It works well but still isn’t satisfactory with something over it. Oh well!

The other top is a New Look pattern, number 6808. I have never sewn this brand of pattern before but Hickey’s has been running a huge sale for the last month so I picked up a few. I liked the look of this one because there are many options – 3/4 length, short sleeves or sleeveless; boatneck, boatneck with collar, scoop neck with collar and bow. It seemed to be mix-and-match so I went for a scoop neck with the collar and short sleeves.

The bow seems a little crazy there but I swear it is just the angle! I used 1.5m of polycotton and more leftover white cotton for the collar. This is mostly a wearable muslin: the polycotton was very cheap and the pattern is so basic that I figured if anything went wrong, I could probably salvage it and still wear it.

I made a few changes. It’s supposed to have a side zipper but I didn’t bother and can fit it on over my head fine. The bust darts are a tiny bit long – nothing so bad that I really had to take them out but when I make it again, I’ll alter it. The pattern itself is very long, I had to lop about 15cm off the bottom of it. Next time, I will interface the facing as well. The collar is quite unwieldy and I had to battle with my facing to get it all to behave. Despite trying it on numerous times, I still wasn’t prepared for how low the neckline is and how gigantic the collar is. Again, it looks best without anything over it.

So neither top is perfection but for the cost of them – probably €15 for both – I’m happy to keep them as holiday and entertaining clothes. Whilst I think the Violet pattern is done, I like the New Look one and will probably make a few more iterations, especially with the longer sleeves. It can be hard to find a pattern for tops for woven fabric that you can get into without a zip.