A New Top

I needed a new top to wear with my Strip Skirt I shared a few post ago. My inspiration was a white knit top I had in my closet. It had a ruffled band around the neckline in the same knit as the shirt. I had this brown jersey knit fabric in my stash. And I used New Look 6735. I have had this pattern in my stash for quite a while so I am not sure if it is still available. There is a short sleeve and a three quarter sleeve t-shirt, a skirt, pants and a cardigan in the envelope. All are sized for stretch knits. I have sewed the t-shirt many times before. I like the way it fits and it is a good basic style.

This is the first time I have sewed this style with embellishment. I decided to use some of the scrap strips I had left over from my Strip Skirt. I cut them into five or six inch pieces and sewed them together to make a long strip. I wanted a variety at my neckline. I gathered both edges and arranged them around the neckline. Then I used strips of the knit to cover the raw edges.

I did run into a bit of a problem on the top neck edge. Even though I tried it on after sewing the ruffle on to make sure it was laying flat. Everything looked good. But it looked horrible after I sewed the knit neckband on. I think this was because the knit was very soft and stretchy and the gathered band was quite bulky compared to the weight of the knit. I was able to fix this by running a piece of narrow elastic through the neckband.

This knit was very stretchy and lightweight so I suspected that I would have trouble with the hems. I could have used my serger cover stitch but I didn't feel like setting it up for that. And I wasn't sure I had enough thread either. I tested a scrap of the knit using a knit stitch on my regular sewing matching and it looked like it would work without a lot of stretching. Well after sewing a few inches on the real hem my soft stretchy fabric got sucked down into the throat plate and I couldn't pull it out. I had to remove the throat plate and cut the ball of thread that formed and caused it to lodge in there. Now I had a hole in my hem. I didn't want to make my hem three inches shorter which would have been one way to fix it. I just sewed the hole up with a straight stitch and finished the hem. First I put some tear away stabilizer under it to prevent the fabric from being sucked down again. I should have thought of that in the first place. In the end the hems turned out nice. I don't think I have ever used that stitch on my machine but it is really nice for knits. It is a slight zig-zag that goes back on itself every stitch. On the top it looks like a straight stitch and underneath you can see a small zig-zag. And the hems are stretchy without looking stretched out. If this worked on this very slinky hard to handle knit I think it should be great for a more stable knit. I see myself using this stitch more in the future. That is if I remember.