Stitched Sorbetto in Grey & Yellow

I've now finished my second Sorbetto that I began back in November. But with this version, I spent a lot more time over it :)

Two things came together for this project: my love of hand embroidery and the new DMC colours, and the front pleat in the Sorbetto pattern, which is extremely ideal for hand stitching additions. In the process of making the pleat, there is a seam all the way down the pleat extension, and then the pleat is fastened down in the neck binding and hem. So there is no way any underside of stitching or stabilizer will show (or get caught on anything) once construction is complete. Perfect.

I was inspired to make this Sorbetto as one of the possible versions for the PR One Pattern, Many Looks contest in Nov/Dec; actually it was the original idea I had for it. But as I mentioned in my last Sorbetto post, contests never get far with me ;) I gave up on the contest idea, but I kept working away at this project, stitching sporadically and sometimes in the evening while watching tv, as you might be able to tell by some of my not so perfect stitching in the petals as I was getting tired! But I wasn't going to tear anything much out -- it's good enough -- it's for a top, not an exhibition piece, and besides, if someone is looking at my stitching in close up on the front of the blouse when I'm wearing it, there are bigger issues than uneven stitches that I'll be worrying about ;)

I made this Vogue 1247 skirt ages ago (in 2014), and as I was cleaning, reorganizing, shuffling (whatever) my stash around in the fall I realized I had quite a large piece of the grey cotton-linen fabric left over. It felt like really nice fabric for stitching, and I considered hooping some up for a decorative piece, but then this idea hit me and I just couldn't do anything else with it. It has a lovely hand and was dreamy to stitch on.

I found a free border floral design at Mary Corbet's embroidery site and adapted it to the size I needed but ended up free styling a bit as transferring the design to this rougher surfaced dark fabric was time consuming. I semi-traced it and semi added in lines with a chalk pencil. I stitched the leaves in my favourite fly stitch, outline/stem stitch for the stems and rough satin stitch for the petals. I enjoyed my time doing it! I used DMC floss #18 for the petals, which I remember because I had such a hard time finding it, and I can't remember the colours of the cream and green, they were just in my stash.

For such a simple project, I feel very pleased with how this turned out. I used my original pre-altered Sorbetto again for the body of this version, but I used the sleeves from the new version of the Sorbetto pattern. I tried to adjust them accordingly -- I took out a fair amount of length between shoulder and bust from the original design, but I couldn't recall exactly (it was about 5 years ago that I first traced the Sorbetto, after all). So there was a bit too much sleeve, but when I gathered the sleeve cap it turned out to look like they were pleated and slightly puffed and I love it so much I left them that way.

Long story for such a simple free pattern (both shirt and embroidery design) but it does get just a little longer. This is the project I had just prepped as some hand work when I was invited to be a part of a super secret project, which is now, this week, no longer secret -- the Sewcialists' Wordpress commercial! It was such fun to be able to help out in a tiny way with this, and the 60 second commercial is full of happy sewing thoughts. Take a look if you haven't watched it already.