Made: top from Sewing Patterns For Everybody #8
This is a pattern from the Japanese pattern book loosely translated as “Sewing Pattern for Everybody”. First, a picture of the muslin. It’s hard to tell from this little pic, but I struggled a lot with the bib piece. You can click on it for a larger view. I couldn’t quite work out the instructions for this part, as far as the cuts to make on the outer piece before matching it up. Regardless, I think the 2 pieces just don’t line up well. In this next picture, you can see the pattern pieces, and see the big space between the 2 where they are actually to be sewn together. 
Other than that however, the sewing went smoothly for this practice run.
Now, with the ‘fashion fabric,’ as they say:
Project Notes: Well I’m glad I did the muslin, because after that, I decided to hand baste the bib piece on for my real version, and then machine stitch, and that went much better. The sleeves might be a touch too much off of my shoulder, so maybe next time I’ll try to modify that. I could also do without the pleat on the back, so maybe skip that next time, and modify the pattern.
Mistakes/Complications: The bias binding on the sleeves was not very evenly done on one side. The trouble was the bias strips themselves, which I made.
I didn’t take the time to start with nice straight pieces. Also, on closer inspection I see that one side of the collar is slightly larger than the other.
Notes for Next Time: I think from now on, for collars, I’m going to draw the stitch line before sewing, to make sure that it turns out even on both sides.
Tags: Japanese pattern, top