Draped Top from Sew Your Own Wardrobe

Hello all, well the children are back at school, even my youngest is now in reception so I am home on my own. Do you want to know what the first thing I did was? I started faffing about with my phone to see if I could take photos of myself for the blog. It turned out that I can but whether I should is debatable; you see it turns out I really don't photograph well and that in this case the make I was really quite proud of looks truly awful on me.

I really don't photograph well at all

As usual I made many mistakes making this item. The biggest one was probably believing that one size fits all because clearly it doesn't fit me. Well that's not strictly true I suppose,  the back actually looks quite nice 

I like it from the back

 This is the Draped Top from Sew Your Own Wardrobe, the book that accompanied the second series of The Great British Sewing Bee. It is the first thing I have made from the book and their are certainly a few more items I will make from it. The instructions in the book aren't as detailed as some of the other books available at the moment but they are certainly all you need for this simple make.

It was lovely and quick to make, I used a viscose I got from the rag market (I live near Birmingham,  I very rarely by fabric anywhere else). I thought it was very pretty, the man had it in blue on his stall and I was looking at it when he said he also had this orange/red colour.  It only uses a metre and has no zips or buttons so is a very cheap make as well.  The cutting out definitely took me longer than the sewing and I whipped this up in an hour or so, I found it a lot easier than I thought to gather the neck, gathers have been something I have never tried but as long as you make your gathering stitches long and loose, take your time making the gathers even and use plenty of pins to keep them in place it really isn't anything to worry about. There isn't really all that much to say about sewing this top, you just have two side seams, gather the top into the neck tie and finish the raw edges. 

As you can see my bust disappears in this top and not in a good way.

As you can see from the side view it is not a top you can wear a bra with, which isn't good when you've breastfed two children. It seems to push me down and flatten me out not very flattering and it looked much better on my dressform although did pull across the bust on her, it clearly need more fabric there but no more in the neck,

I do have a plan though, not to rescue this one but to make the pattern work next time. I am going to first of all work out a way to add some more fabric to the bust whilst still keeping the drapey unstructured shape, so I am not flattened out. Secondly, and rather more dramatically I am going to make it longer; much longer.

Next time i make it, I see this top, with a few adjustments, as a beach dress. It will be in a similar fabric but mid-thigh length with short splits at the side so I can walk. Best of all it doesn't matter if your bikini straps show so everything will be hoisted into the right place. That will be waiting until next summer though, my sewing plans are certainly becoming more autumnal and I shall be starting to think about a winter coat very soon, although whether a winter coat becomes a reality is anyone's guess.

On another note entirely, I am all ready for One Week One Pattern.  Although it does mean more photos of myself.