Voila ici le Sorbetto Top! It’s my first official entry in the 2nd Annual Summer Essentials Sew-Along. I’m vacillating between “Holy cow, I’m in love!” and “Holy crap, how did I screw things up so badly?!”
The good: The fabric! Mwah! I love it! It’s lightweight, sheer cotton that’s a perfect pink. I love the rectangular woven dots! Also, it’s just my style– comfortable, cute, and summery (plus it hides my bra straps!).
The bad: Ack!! Sunni’s Seam Finishing Week came one day too late! Stupid me, I didn’t realize that [zigzagging to finish seams] + [sheer, lightweight fabric] = extreme ugliness. I’m not going to show you the inside of the garment– it’s way too embarrassing! There’s also a slight bit of weird puckering at the bottom of the side seams where it starts to curve out. Not sure what caused that.
The “meh”: The bias tape really forms a nice contrast (Wright’s 1/2″ Double-Fold in “oyster”, an unappealing name for a garment color, but that’s beside the point), but it seems a bit heavy for the lightweight fabric. It sticks out a bit from the garment instead of laying nice and flat, particular under the arms. I’m not really sure how to remedy this. Any thoughts? Also in the “meh” category– fit issues! This is a seemingly simple top, but the style may not be instantly flattering on many people and may require some tinkering (or, in my case, three muslins!) to be wearable.
On that topic, mods: I started out by cutting a straight size 2, which should have fit pretty well according to the chart of finished measurements. But the bust darts hit way too high and too far in, so I traced them on some transparent pattern paper, taped this onto the pattern about where I thought they should fall, and changed the shape of the pattern edge so the triangle thingy that pokes out between the legs of the dart was in the right place. This was my first time trying out bust darts, so I’m happy to have tried my hand at a new skill. Somehow I didn’t have enough ease in the bust, or really, all over (my finished bust measurement was 3″ smaller than estimated), so I added 5/8″ to the edge of both the front and back pieces, which did the trick. The armcyes were also way too tight, so I cut to the size 10 line, which worked. Finally, this top is crazy short. I added 2″ of length between where the 2C and 2D arrows meet on the back and the 6B and 6C arrows meet on the front. I liked the length after this, so I added an additional 5/8″ to the bottom of the garment to reach this length after hemming it.
This pattern comes together really quickly, so it would have been really fast and satisfying if I hadn’t had all the weird fitting issues. Now that I’ve sorted those out, I’ll probably crank out a few more of these over the summer… and next time maybe I’ll try my hand at French seams or another nicer seam finishing technique.
Anyone else planning to make a Sorbetto? How are your summer projects coming along?