White Tie Top

My latest sewing is a top for a friend of mine, requested for her birthday. I've made quite a few things for others now and while it's definitely is more stressful sewing for someone else I do enjoy it. One of the nice things about sewing for my friends is testing myself to try and copy a ready to wear design. Most patterns created aren't aimed with my age group in mind and while there are a lot of lovely trouser patterns that I love, I find that patterns for simple tops with a slight twist are much harder to come by. This means that they have to be self-drafted - definitely easier said than done!

You may remember that I also made a top for a another friend last year. With both of these tops I asked them to choose a ready to wear top or style for me to copy. This time I used this top as my inspiration, the detail requested being the tie at the front. As you can see the tops look pretty different, I like to think of this one as a slightly more wearable version of the ready to wear one! I left the ties untied in the photos but in reality they will probably be tied together when worn. I did initially plan to have the bodice hold together simply using the ties like in the photo, but issues of decency prevented this from working out! To solve the problem I kind of pleated the ties to gather them in the centre and then and sewed them together. I also hand sewed the left and right side together up about 1" just above where the ties meet. The final result actually worked really well. The ties provide enough coverage for the top to be worn comfortably and the desgin feature is still kept if they're tied together.

Drafting the front bodice was not easy! For most of the time I had absolutely no idea if the end result would actually look OK. The ties on this top and this one aren't dissimilar so I had a vague idea of the pattern shape that I needed, just scaled up in size. The hardest part was probably figuring out the depth that the bodice needed to be in order to have a smooth curve to join the front onto the back. Once again my mannequin was priceless when I was designing this top, especially because I couldn't fit it to me as I was sewing for someone else.

I still can't quite believe that the top actually worked - it looked amazing on my friend when she tried it on! During the drafting process I was very much tempted to throw it out of the window but I just about managed to ignore the impulse and carry on. I also now have a pattern piece for the bodice meaning that if I make another one I will never have to go through that same drafting process again!