knitting neels

I had to get a yellow fever vaccine last night because we’re going to South America for our honeymoon, and while I was in town I swung by Rubanesque to see if they had any trims suitable for my top. I found two contenders and was swaying more towards a delicate, shiny, pale trim but the shop assistants convinced me otherwise. I think they were right.

I hemmed, pinned and tacked last night so my only job this morning was to machine sew the lot together.

The back shows a good example of needing a better fit. I did think about it. A few darts wouldn’t have gone amiss.

That said, it’s not the most fitted of tops. I didn’t want to go the route of having to figure out a closure.

I am really happy (and surprised) with the fit of the sleeve.

While I was tacking the trim to the hem, I figured I should tack the facings down. It worked well and you can’t even see my tiny pinprick stitches from the outside.

The fabric cost me about €5 and the trim cost €10.50 so all in all, pretty good bang for my buck. I learned so much from drafting the pattern and can still see places that need tweaking: the angle of my bust dart, for example, was not so good, and I could do with closing the shoulder dart a bit more. And of course, adding some darts on the back would be nice. These are all easy adjustments I can make on the next one. I would like to keep the width of the neckline but make it rounder and add a flat peter-pan collar. Like if I found a solid navy and added a navy collar with a lace overlay. Yummy!