heyhey,

what did you do this weekend? 🙂 I did 10 tops, really easy and quick ones. My next plans: Sewing fitting tank-tops to create layering looks with different or same fabrics. Well for now I am happy I managed to finish the tops. 🙂 and I love them. I bought special paper I can print on and what I printed I can iron on fabrics, as you can see I tried that with my logo. You can see that the blue ink in my printer is empty, so its only pink 😉 looks interesting, too.

Recipe

Ingredients

for one top:

ca. 0.8 m elastic fabric

sewing thread

sewing machine, paper, paper shears, tailor shears, pen and pins

Pattern

draw 2 squares on a paper:

one at the edge: length on the edge the wished length of your top (mine 37 cm) x 1/4 chest

second: length your wished sleeve length from the shoulder x (your arm + 10-15cm)/2 (mine 20cm)

go 5 cm away from the right angle and if your sleeve is longer 5cm at the sleeve hem and connect those 3 dots with a curve, then add seam allowance, but not to the top or the edge

cut that part and draw it twice on a bigger paper, edge on edge again and mirroring at the top

now you need only your neck-hole, take the top line or mirror line and go 2 cm to one side at the edge and 20 to the other and 12 on the middle line then connect all those points. if you like another neckline better, like a v-neck for example you can change this up the way you like, but be sure to measure your line later then double it and test if that fits over your head 😉 so you can be sure you can put it on

add seam allowance at your neck-hole as well

Cutting

Fold your fabric selvage on selvage, if you wanna spare fabric and yours is wide, fold anywhere parallel to selvage so your pattern fits on the folded part. I cut all 10 at the same time and put the folds of the fabrics right onto each other

then pin your pattern at the fold

and cut it

Sewing

remember to secure your seams at beginning and end

next fold the part side-seam and side-seam with right side in and pin it, as you can see I put them together in colors, so I did not have to change the sewing thread all the time. and sew the side-seams I used straight stitching that my machine calls stretch-stitching.

well actually for some of them thats all I did, I show you my different versions and tell you what else I did with them:

with that I didn’t to anything else, the fabric doesn’t fray so I left the edges as they were, I have this great fabric also in blue as you can see at the top made of it or my sewing-machine-dolman-sleeve

for this I folded all edges 1cm inside and sewed them with zigzag and ironed on my logo, with that special print paper, and I also cut the sleeves shorter. The fabric was a rest of a wedding dress I did some years ago.

folded in and sewn here as well, isn’t that a funny fabric? Bought it because of that, but never knew what to do with it 😉

here I cut the bodice a little shorter and the neck-line a little deeper and then left the edges open. the fabric I bought for fashion school once but never used it.

here I hemmed again, after cutting the sleeves a little shorter. The fabric I bought to use a little piece for another project.

here is the fabric you saw in green above, and I used for the dolman sleeve. I cut the sleeves a little shorter, left the egdes open and cut a straight line at the centre front.

just hemming here. That panne velvet I once bought for a project I never realised and probably never will, I have about 2 or 3 more metres of it. So I will definitly be able to do a fitting tank top.

This lace was used for a project while graduating from fashion school, but I had some rest and so I used it for this. I cut the sleeves a little and hemmed.

sleeves shorter, neckhole deeper, lovely fabric 🙂 I bought in sale, hemmed.

sleeves shortend and cut at the centre front and open edges. This camouflage was really cheap I think 1€ per meter, I also have it in green, which I used for my test project for this blog…. well since I took the pictures with my cellphone back then I can show you how I made it, but if I wear it in a style pictures one day, I will tell you about it.

 

So I am really curious what you will do out of this simple pattern, as you could see, they don’t look the same and mostly because of the use of different fabrics. The pattern for the tank top is already finished, so you can complete your layers-look soon.

I hope you like my idea and let me know how yours looks!

 

keep sewing and smiling

 

your TailorFairy