Knit tops: Stashbusting Sewalong March 2016

The March theme for the Stahsbusting Sewalong is sewing with knits. I've managed to get two knit tops made up this month, but ran out of time for blogging, so here's a quick write up on both of them together.

The first of my tops is my second version of my Alabama Chanin inspired flowers and leaves top. You can find the first (white and cream) version of my top here. I made all the alterations to the pattern that I mentioned in the previous post: Looser fitting, shortened sleeves, and changed the placement of my flowers and leaves. I also opted for some contrasting fabric colours for the fronts, in blue and green. The paint is a mixture of blue and white fabric paint.

I inadvertently swapped which side went over the top on the front, which played havoc with my flower / leaf design, with the hem going right through the bottom of one of my leaves, so I opted to not cut them all out. I really like how it looks with a portion of the designs left whole. I also swapped which side of the sleeves is on top, again, just because I didn't check back with the first top to see which way I had done it. Neither really matters of course, and now that I have one top done each way, I can work out which I like best.

The fit on this version is much more comfortable. With the cream top I am forever pulling the fronts into place at the centre. Whenever I move the fronts tug towards the sides, exposing my belly button.

My second top is what I'm calling my ombre top. I had the idea for this back at the start of last year, when I bought all of these colours at the same time, and realised how nice they looked together. Each of the colours on the front are actually enormous pleats, and the centre front panel is about 150cm long!

Not that you would know that there are pleats in it from how I put it together. My inspiration for this one was the same as my inspiration for my white ruffle front top from about two years ago.

Image Source

I only wanted one pleat per colour, and didn't want the edges of the pleats to extend past the seam line. Not that I don't like the look of it, I couldn't think of a way that I liked to finish off the edges. I don't like to leave raw edges, didn't want an overlocked edge, and wasn't keen on added bulk if I hemmed the edges by turning over once. I started with the same pattern that I made for the white ruffle front top, but curved the centre seams to match the side seams, then made a pattern piece for each of the pleats.

I debated whether to add sleeves or not, and decided to use the same pattern as my first top above, but just with one pattern piece, curved along the outer edges.

Can you tell I had a hair cut between photo shoots?

So that's it for my March stashbusting, all on theme too (yay me!) I'm looking forward to getting on with a lot more stashbusting sewing in the next few months. I just hope my blogging can keep up with my sewing!


Stashbusting as at the end of March
YTD Stash In:    7m
YTD Stash Out: 8.35m (target, double the total stash in)