My Spring Top Week Top!

Done! There are two things that I don't usually like: a lot of hand sewing, and working with chiffon. This top involved a bunch of both, so it's a small miracle that it's finished!




This is my top of Spring Top Week, hosted by Rae!

I really liked the J Crew tshirts and cardigans with chiffon trim. Specifically, this gorgeous chiffon trim tissue tshirt cardigan... which is $58.00. It's gorgeous, but that's a bit much for a fancy tshirt. So I bought a yard of gray chiffon from Paron's, and this tissue weight black knit from Spandex House (it's soooooo soft. I wish you could share textures online!).

The base pattern that I used is Jalie 2566, the cardigan from the knit twinset pattern. I shorted the sleeves to just above elbow length, but otherwise kept it the same- I didn't cut the band, though. Then I carefully laid out my chiffon on my rotary cutting board. It had been torn off the bolt, so I had a vertical edge that was on the grain, so that went along one of the vertical lines on the grid printed on my cutting board. (Can I add a note that one real reason why I LOVE the garment district stores in NYC is that they tear fabrics when they cut your yardage? As opposed to JoAnns, where they cut wonky angled lines and you can easily be shorted by 1/4 a yard. AND torn fabrics are easier to true up!) So I lined the selvedge up on a horizontal line, and carefully smoothed until everything was lined up. Then I used a rotary cutter and ruler to cut about six three inch wide strips of chiffon on the true bias (I have a line printed on the cutting board for that, which I followed).

Next I joined enough strips to get a long strip of chiffon that was about a foot longer than the front/neck edge of the cardigan. I stitched it- folded in half and purposely twisted in a few places- to the outside of the front edge of my cardigan. The folded edge of the chiffon was even with the raw edge of the knit. Then I flipped it to the inside and top stitched down, so a bit peeked out the edge.



Next I took the other strips of chiffon and free hand gathered them with a needle and thread into rosette shapes and stitched them down. There are two snaps hidden under the bottom rosette, which is how the cardigan closes. I'll wear this over a camisole as a dressy spring tshirt.