I LOVE THIS TOP!

Sorry for shouting, but I MEAN it - this is my favorite thing ever! (You'd get the typical spazzy open-mouth grin here, but I'm trying to channel Alabama Chanin's models, who are usually very serious...and barefooted.)


This is showing you my boo-boo at the bottom of the side seam where I took too shallow a seam allowance and my felling didn't catch both layers...whatever, I'll go back and fix that.


And make a serious swayback adjustment, plus using a size larger, though I don't really think it looks THAT bad. All the pictures I've looked at from women who've sewn these tops show them fitting rather snugly.


And also my neckline stretched a bit, and I forgot to stretch the binding slightly when sewing it on. It's a lot easier to do that on the machine than while you're handstitching, but I did better with the armholes. I just love the neckline of this thing and how it fits. This is going to ROCK as a Mardi Gras dress pattern!


Unless I make the corset instead....


So of course I had to go buy the first book that has the corset pattern.


Plus I picked up more button craft thread at Joann, and found out that Hancock has it too, just in fewer colors. So dark green and dark blue are the only colors besides red in the whole town, plus a few shades of brown - what gives? I also found out that they don't carry cotton jersey, but fortunately I have some sort of cotton jersey with rayon that I bought at All About Sewing in pink and blue, so those are up on the cutting table next. Oh, and here's a close-up of the neckline stitched by accident with single strand thread, and the armhole stitched with double thread - makes a big difference.


Uh, also a lot harder to fix screw-ups when using double-stranded thread, because you can't just unthread the needle and pull out a couple of stitches. You have to either cut it and knot it then start over with new thread, or if you get very lucky you can go backwards through the same hole - which I was able to do once (because the Lord is my seamstress - see my revised Psalm 23 on sidebar). Also, I just googled "the Lord is my seamstress" and my blog post was the very first entry - get out!