Showing posts with label boxy top. Show all posts
Showing posts with label boxy top. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Highlighter Yellow Athina Top

Last week I decided to make an Athina Top from Tessuti, inspired mainly by the #SewFrugal23 challenge on IG. I always enjoy sewing up free patterns & have had this one for a long time, but never made it. Now I have! 

The Athina top is a boxy, oversized tunic kind of top, and I decided to make it from a bright highlighter yellow linen in my stash. I have a lot of this particular linen, and decided it would work nicely for this project. Looking online at some examples of others makes of this pattern, I noticed that quite a few people had added one angled patch pocket, apparently inspired by an Elisabeth Susann piece. I really like the look so copied it, freehanding a pocket slightly smaller than some of the other ones out there. It's my favourite thing about the top now! 

This is quite oversized - I cut a medium, and added some extra width at the hip. But when I sewed it up, I ended up taking 3/4" out of each side, sort of narrowing up the sides until the underarm point. And I think that next time I make it, I will most likely take an inch out of the centre front and back, just to reduce the billowy effect of it! Made it a drapier fabric and a little bit smaller, it will look a bit more like the sample photos. But overall I like this, and despite the linen wrinkles I think I'll enjoy wearing it. I love yellow and this will go with so many of my current pieces. 

The sizing on this free pattern is limited, there's only a range of XS-XL, and as I noted, I fall into the Medium range (although with the generous fit, I could probably make the S). I love their free tee, the Mandy, and now have a similar woven style that I think could also be a new stalwart in my closet. 













Tuesday, June 29, 2021

A Summer Sewalong Project

My local Garment Guild is one of my favourite groups of people :) We have a lot of fun and have kept our Guild going over the last year via Zoom meetings. We've had some great guests and speakers, and have kept in touch with each other. I really enjoy it. 

But of course we don't meet over the summer, so this summer I suggested a sewalong so that we could all keep sewing together while apart ;) 

Our library systems in this area subscribe to CreativeBug, so with our library cards we can all log in and follow along with tons of classes. Our summer sewalong follows all the pattern drafting courses run by Cal Patch -- there are 10 sessions which works out perfectly for us to do one a week until the end of the summer! 

This week we started with drafting our own Boxy Top. It's a great intro to the process for people who have never used measurements to draft out a simple pattern for yourself before. It's fairly straightforward, but there is a lot of potential in such a basic patterns, some of which are shared in the class -- colour blocking, dividing it into panels, adding pockets etc. I think this would be a fun project to experiment with and see what you could do with it. 

I drafted mine out but second guessed the arm depth and shortened it by about 3/8" since I am short between bust and shoulder. However, I should have trusted the numbers because my first sewn sample is a bit too grabby into my armpit area. I've added the 3/8" back onto the pattern and will try again. 

I used some linen from my stash (yay, using up big chunks of leftovers!) and left the hem raw since the selvage is a pretty line of shimmery thread. I am thinking about maybe embroidering a motif along the neckline to spark it up a little. 

The fit is great (except for the armhole boo boo, which is still wearable though not perfect) and I really liked the simple process. 

It was fun to see what others had done with this project, and now we are all looking forward to week two -- drafting a simple pair of wide leg pants. At least I hope it will be simple! Maybe I'll finally have a pair of pants that fits. I am hoping to learn more about basic pant drafting so that I'll understand patterns and alterations better. I hardly ever wear pants so haven't really made many, and those I've tried have been rather disastrous. Onward and upward. 

Friday, November 27, 2020

Shirt No. 1, a Boxy Basic

Two things, well three really, came together into today's project. First, the Sewcialists are hosting a mini-challenge right now focusing on easy tees, the #SewcialistsTNTee. Second, I checked out CreativeBug via a local library, and found that the 100 Acts of Sewing Shirt No. 1 was a featured class and pattern. Lastly, I had a small piece of wool blend suiting that I thrifted ages ago that jumped out at me as the perfect fit for this pattern -- I've been wanting to use it for ages but could never find the right small yardage pattern, until now.

This is a simple boxy top, but I've always liked the way it fits on the versions I've seen people make, so when I saw it on CreativeBug I knew I'd have to give it a try. I traced off size M, grading to L at the hips. It is just one piece, the same for front and back. I laid it out on my small 1 metre of fabric, and then second guessed myself and took 1/2" wedge out of the centre front and back as I often do with wide necklines. This had the advantage of giving me the literal extra 1/2" I needed at the sleeve edges so that I could fit this into my fabric. 

It's a quick and clear sewing process; sew up the shoulder seams and side seams, press and hem the sleeve edges and bottom edge. I gave mine a 1/2" hem at both spots. Then I finished the neckline with some prepackaged black bias tape. I am a slow sewer but this only took me just over 2 hours to make from cutting out to wearing. .For me that is a quick project! I did have to take a bit of extra time in the cutting stage, to try to line up the red stripe in my limited yardage, but I think I got pretty close. 

Because this is a wool blend I planned to wear this as a layering piece, and I'm so glad it worked out over my turtleneck and fave Lindy Petal skirt. It also works with my fabulous thrifted necklace, which makes me happy :) 

Next time I think I'll cut large all around to give it more boxiness, and also, instead of taking that centre wedge from the neckline, I'll leave the width and just cut the shoulder seams further in so there is no bra strap viewing. And I may lower the front neckline a bit. 

I do like the shape and fit of this, however, and it's such an easy project that it's worth it. There are also a couple of variations in the pattern, for a button front version and a bias cut bottom section version. I can see trying a wide range of adaptations in this one.

I'm pleased with my fall/winter version of Shirt No. 1, and think I'll be making other summery ones too.



Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Antero Shell Top x 2



I liked the look of the Antero Shell top as soon as I first saw it on Instagram, posted by the designer, Amanda Carestio of Sew News magazine. It was being sold as part of the first Sew News capsule wardrobe, the Well Traveled Capsule, on Interweave. Luckily for me, I noticed that this capsule was on sale during Black Friday 2019 sales and it was one of my only BF purchases. Mainly for this top!

After all that time, I've finally traced it out -- super, super easy, two pieces. I used some green seersucker scraps from my stash and tried it out and even with this crisper, low drape cotton blend I liked it!


So then it was on to trying it in a lighter weight and drapier fabric. I found some plain navy linen in my stash; I am not entirely sure how it got there since I rarely buy or use solids but it was a nice lightweight linen so I gave it a try for my 2nd version.



The main alteration I made to the pattern was to raise that V neck by an inch. I knew it was too low for me as drafted, especially since I am short between shoulder and bust. So when I traced it off, I changed the V and the corresponding facing before even trying the pattern.

The other adaptation I made was to grade it out from medium at the shoulder to large at the hip, and added an extra 2 inches to the length on my first try. On the blue version I also added a little sleeve cuff.


This is a really basic top but it's effective on the body. The shoulder drape and the fit are relaxed and on trend. It's a great beginner pattern, but also a great base to do some alterations and additions to. I might embroider a white floral spray on to my navy version to perk it up a little, for example.


There is a tutorial on the Sew Daily blog  by the designer on how to make this into a dress (simple also) and she suggests ideas like pockets or a waist sash. She's also posted a handful of amazing patchwork versions, with other variations on that blog as well.

I have been taking some pattern drafting courses on BluPrint (before they disappear) and that's given me ideas about design that I'm planning on trying using this simple top as my base. We'll see how that goes!