Sew-a-bration of Womanhood:: Parisian Top

Today I have the unique honor of participating in a wonderful series hosted by Shaffer Sisters and Call Ajaire, a Sew-a-bration of Womanhood.

The focus on the series is to celebrate womanhood in all its forms.  I took the opportunity to do something I don’t do all that often – some selfish (or self-care if you prefer) sewing.  I purchased the Pattern Anthology women’s pattern bundle recently, and one of the great tops from that seemed fitting!

The Parisian Top by Go To Patterns was my choice.  This was the first of Andrea’s patterns I’ve sewn with and it was very thorough and easy to follow.  I made a few modifications to the pattern – some were design choices to better suit my frame, and others were due to working with the amount of fabric I had to use.

I’ve been on a stripes and floral kick lately and chose this striped ponte di roma and floral jersey from Girl Charlee.  The ponte is a nice heavy knit and that extra weight and body helps to skim over some extra padding I have after two pregnancies and diastasis recti (separated abdominal muscles).  Now I can match Hadley in her Soleil Dress!

The design change I made was to reduce the gathering on the head of the shoulder.  I have broad shoulders, so volume there makes me look like a linebacker!  I narrowed the top of the sleeve by taking about an inch and a half from the width at the top only by folding a dart into the pattern piece.  After setting in the sleeve, this reduction wasn’t giving the effect I was looking for, so I pulled the stitching from that section only.  I considered just shortening the top of the sleeve, but after playing around a bit and testing with pins I found that an inverted box pleat looked quite nice and made the sleeve lay much more close to my shoulder.

The other change was to shorten the sleeve length, but this was purely because the yard of striped ponte knit I had didn’t quite stretch far enough.  I’m very happy with this sleeve length, and would make it just like this again.

About the photo shoot:  I had planned for and taken photos a couple of days prior but my hubby and I were having some communication problems and the resulting photos weren’t very good (lots of photos of me giving instruction and some accompanying confused faces).  I thought I’d just make do with those, but another opportunity arose with a new photographer:

She’s still a little rough around the edges and needs work on framing a shot, but it was fun and I’m actually happier with these photos!

Well, some more than others!

She was hilarious – giving me modeling direction at times.   She’s responsible for the back view above as well as the next.

I call this pose “focus here”!  Pardon the mostly worn away makeup and humidity frizzed hair – I didn’t have time to polish my look first.  Let’s be realistic – this is what I look like 90% of the time and that’s just fine.