A monthly box of sewing goodies, delivered to your door

The Molly Top; A Double Feature

Having made my pledge to MeMadeMay on Zoe’s, of So, Zo… What do you know?, blog I decided it was time to pull my sleeves up and make myself a few new everyday garments.

The point of MMM is not to make you panic sew just so that you can join in, but to encourage you to get more wear and enjoyment out of your handmade wardrobe. However, I have had these fabrics in my stash waiting to become Molly tops since January so I figured now was the perfect time to get them made.

The Molly Top is one of the five patterns in Sew Over It’s My Capsule Wardrobe; City Break eBook. It’s a lovely simple jersey top with grown on sleeves and a curved hem. There is also the option to lengthen the pattern to a dress.

The first version I made out of this lovely grey jersey from Girl Charlee. I had to shorten the neckband a little and in hindsight I probably would have shortened it a little bit more as it does stick up just a teeny tiny bit at the shoulders.

Having washed it a couple of times I feel like the sleeves are perhaps a little on the short side, but I can easily rectify that if I want to by adding a cuff band. Other than that I am extremely happy with this top so I cracked on with version 2 pretty quickly.

For this top I had bought some of the softest aqua jersey with an origami bird print from Sew Over It with a Christmas voucher. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like they have any of this print left.

It wasn’t until I had finished it, tried it on and went to look at my masterpiece in the mirror (feeling rather smug after it only took me a couple of hours) before I realised I had cut the front piece upside down. Meaning the gorgeous birds are now flying drunk.

It serves me right for trying to be economical with my fabric, I turned the front pattern piece upside down so that I could fit the sleeve piece in and give myself a good length of leftover fabric to play with.

Being the lazy seamstress that I am there is no way I am unpicking the whole top and start again, besides the birds are the right way up when I look down at them, so I am calling it my “Tipsy Birds” top and I shall wear it with pride.

As I said, the reason this happened is because I was trying to be economical with my fabric and I think I have enough left over to put towards making a raglan style t-shirt with some contrast fabric so all is not completely lost.

I am learning to own my mistakes!