Top 5 of 2016: the Misses

Following on from my recent Top 5 Hits post (thanks again Gillian!), I've just gone back through all my 2016 posts identifying the "misses", and as it turns out they fall neatly into two categories: fit and fabric (or both).


Let's start with the fabric fails:

This Vogue 1129 coat - love the style, the drape, the colour and nearly everything about this coat, but the fabric is insanely scratchy.  I've managed to wear it just once.  A silk scarf helped, but I have other softer coats.  It's on the list of things to re-sew in a nicer fabric - wish I'd had the guts to start this in a good fabric, but then I did start it years ago...

Next up, there's this StyleArc Esme top (already donated to my local second hand shop). The fabric is an interesting and warm double sided material from The Fabric Shop, but I just don't like it. My recollection is that I bought it when I was looking for something very specific for a party dress and thought this might be close enough - the print was similar to what I wanted, but the colour and fabric type weren't right. I will have to try this pattern again next winter in a merino wool - perhaps down a size too depending on the fabric. I do love the pattern though - check out the cool collar:

And then there's the floral raglan sleeved top (Vogue 1389) in this post - I really like the pattern and intended to sew the top again in a plainer fabric but never got around to it. The fabric is one I bought to make my daughter a winter fit-and-flare dress, but she had no interest in it, and I should have just passed the fabric on to someone else. Oh and I'm not sure why I look so smug in this photo:

And now for the fit fails:

This dress, adapted from Vogue 1314 - urgh, I'm too old to be dressed up as a sausage, even if the fabric is a divine colour. Not sure what I was thinking when I made this - perhaps I was daydreaming!

More in the sadly "too small" camp: this StyleArc Rosie top and vintage skirt:

I still intend to make the Rosie top again with more width, and I've got the skirt fabric back in the stash so it can become something else one day.

And then there's the accidental compression bikini pants (and I can't believe I've got a bunch of horrible and quite cheeky photos of myself wearing them on the internet!):

Finally these Burda 7214 mustard pants are the cross-over - the fit looked OK in the photos but loosened with wear (and felt wrong), and the fabric was too thin and stretchy for this type of garment. Disappointing, but the pattern itself is excellent and I really should have another go at it with a heavier stretch fabric - and maybe if I give myself belt loops and a higher waist the pants won't feel like they're falling down: 

That's more than 5, isn't it - it's 7 garments by my count!  I should also include a failed skirt I never blogged - the fit failure (too tight, too short; I couldn't fit it for blog photos) that was my version of Vogue 1389 (close ups posted on Instagram here, and here). And then there were the umpteen garments I started and didn't finish - but they don't count, do they? 

Looking on the bright side, there were no dud patterns in there, hooray! - but obviously I still need to work on my fabric choices and fit. Maybe those areas can be my 2017 new year's resolutions....

How was 2016 for you as a sewing year?




Wishing you all a very happy and healthy year with plenty of successful sewing in 2017!


- Gabrielle xx

Mustard Pants (Burda 7214)

Yesterday was a public holiday in Australia, and although the weather was fine and going to the beach on Australia Day is a very Australian tradition, my kids wouldn't have a bar of it.  The new school year is about to start. and I suspect they are trying to eke the holidays out for as long as possible by avoiding doing fun stuff; everyone knows time flies when you're having fun!

No matter; I spent the day sewing, and finally managed to finish off a pair of pants started ages ago and very nearly finished in December.

This is how they were looking in December - so, so, SO close to done!  All that remained to do was the buttonhole and button:

The pants are now finished, and I'm pleased they're done, but putting them on again reminded me why I hadn't finished them earlier - I don't like them. The colour is not doing me any favours, and the fit on my backside is not good at all.

The fit seems to have got worse since December - it could be that I've changed weight (probably) but it could also be that ironing the pants stretched out the fabric in the backside.

Let me show you how they were looking yesterday afternoon:

In these front / side views you can see the front crotch curve is too long; that's why I get a fold of fabric on my upper thigh when I move:

There's also a lot of wrinkling on the side seams. The wrinkling alongside my knees is fine, but the wrinkling at top of my thighs unfortunately relates to the problem at the back of the pants:

There's a lot of extra fabric there - my backside is flatter than the pattern :(. 

I know what to do to fix these issues; I had to work on exactly the same problems when I did a pants fitting class using a Vogue pattern. I wish I'd compared the Burda pattern pieces to the Vogue ones I'd adjusted to fit, but I was too lazy! Next time... 

Although I'm not very happy with the fit of these pants on me, I think this is a terrific pattern, and I've seen it look great on many others.  I really like the proportions of the waistband and yoke (I hate a long yoke!), and the order of construction is very sensible, allowing you to take the pants in to fit at the CB seam rather than just the side seams. 

Speaking of taking in, I should mention the adjustments I made to view A of this pattern. I started with a size 40 (EUR)/ 14 (US), corresponding to my measurements, and then I: 

1. lengthened the legs (I don't recall how much, but it would have been at least 5 cm for my 174 cm height);
2. omitted the knee patches;
3. omitted the zips on the lower leg side seams;
4. omitted the zips just below the front pockets; 
5. omitted the belt carriers because I wasn't liking the pants enough to bother - though if I'd ended up liking these, a belt would have been useful, as the pants sit at the low waist;
6. took in the pants at the side seams by 1 cm for the full length of the pants, suggesting I should have gone down a size;
7. took in the pants at CB by another 1 cm, tapering to nothing at the junction with the CF seam; and
8. removed 3.5 cm in the height of the pockets after pinning the originals in place, ready to top stitch. On fitted pants, my preference is for the back pockets to finish ON the backside, and not encroach into thigh territory. For someone with more curve in their backside than me the original pockets should have been fine. 

There's one other part of the pattern I'd change if I made these again, and that's the front pockets. The pocket bags are deep and their outlines show through the front legs in my stretch cotton, so next time around I'd make the pocket bags from a much lighter fabric and perhaps also make the pants themselves from a heavier fabric.  I'd also change the shape of the pocket opening, as I find it quite low and very wide - I prefer a smaller opening to that pocket.

I'll leave you now with some "in the flat" photos so you can see the details properly, including my dodgy repair to the inside of the waistband at CB where I'd accidentally snipped away fabric, and the place where I left the seam finishing too late:  

 

Happy sewing!

- Gabrielle x

Set Theory: Riviera Stripes

First of all an apology is in order. I promised Susan a "how to" to explain how I'd substitute in a different pattern to get around my fitting woes with the Inari dress, and I haven't done it.  It's a little more work than I was originally envisaging, and I just haven't managed to get my act together.  I haven't forgotten, but if you *need* to know how to alter one pattern with another, please have a look at the following posts instead:

1. this post, which walks you through the modifications the author (SewingTidbits) makes to the Grainline Moss Mini pattern, based on the pattern pieces from a similar Lekala pattern she ordered to fit her exact measurements, and
2. this post from the Fashion Incubator, which responds to a sewing blogger and basically says we should modify patterns that already work for us

I'm really sorry Susan!

_____________


And now let's go to the subject of this post.

This top and skirt - two items, and clearly part of a set.

Isn't the fabric awesome?

A couple of months ago Tessuti Fabrics had a flash sale: $10 / metre for a limited selection of flawed fabrics. I love a bargain, and I love Colette's eye for fabrics, so I raced to the Surry Hills store in my lunch break and (of course) found several fabrics I loved.  This stripey fabric had several tears in it, but it reminded me so much of the coastal parts of my holiday to Europe last year - beach umbrellas, southern Europe, sun and sea - that I determined I'd just work around the damage.   [The fabric is called "Circus Stripe", it's normally $26/ metre, and there was an unflawed bolt of it in the Surry Hills shop last time I was there.]

I'm obviously way too late for Sophie's Two Piece Setacular Party (yeah, that was last year!), but a two piece set was what my mind envisaged when I picked up this glorious roll of fabric.

And I'm really pleased to say it worked out as I'd hoped :).

I should note though that projects that work out "as I'd hoped" are rarely blissfully straightforward for me.  Even if the planning, cutting out, sewing and fit are all smooth sailing, there will be doldrums of procrastination and doubt.

Both this top and skirt - even though they're easy patterns - had their challenges.  Both started out too large for me, and both involved zip battles and lots of unpicking and resewing. And although I managed to finish the top within a reasonably short timeframe, the skirt was subject to a long period of "I'm not sure I can make myself sew this to the standard I want it" before I knuckled down and got it  finished.  Thank goodness I started them in winter! 

I made the top using Burda 7051, view D.  The pattern is in Burda's "young" line, and heaps of patterns in this line really appeal to me though they're intended for teens and younger women.  This line is definitely trendier than the generic line of Burda patterns, and I suspect it uses a narrower size range.  This particular pattern fits busts 76 - 100cm (30 - 39.5") inclusive.

I cut the pattern a few centimetres longer and also a size larger (14) than my measurements had indicated as I wasn't sure how fitted the pattern would be, but you can see my top is a bit loose on me. Mind you, that's after cutting out a botched centre back zip and resewing the centre back seam with a wider seam allowance to get past the mess, and also after taking in the side seams at least a size. Oh and with the waist darts omitted (to get the shape of top I had in mind). Maybe I need to re-measure myself - the top is even loose at the bust level, where I did a lot of taking in!  Anyway, the loose fit feels very comfortable, and the bonus is that I can easily get the top on and off, even without a zip.

Are you wondering what went wrong with the zip? Well, it turns out that even though I'm an invisible zip Ninja, I'm useless with regular zips. The zip in this top is supposed to extend from the neckline most of the way down the back. At the time I was sewing this I didn't have an invisible zip that length in any kind of coordinating colour, but I had a white regular zip that was the perfect length.  Despite following all the advice of The Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Sewing, when I sewed my zip in it wasn't perfectly centred.  And even if I'd been prepared to let that "slide" (yes, pun intended), when I tested the zip, the pull got stuck because I'd sewed too close to the teeth a third of the way down. Then when I tried to unpick my stitches to redo the zip, the fabric frayed and the stripe lines unravelled, and the zip was still stuck. Ha. My only recourse was to cut the blasted thing out and sew the centre back together as a seam - which as I mention above, turned out to be a good thing as it improved the fit of the top :).


One of the things I really like about this pattern is that it includes facing pattern pieces; one each for front and back.  This is my favourite type of facing (much neater than separate neck and arm facings on a small garment like this), and I always prefer facings to a bias edge finish (for me they're much better behaved in both the sewing and the wearing).  I cut the facings slightly smaller than the outer pieces in height and width so as to keep them hidden when taking turn of cloth into account, and to be confident that they wouldn't flip out I clipped the seams assiduously and attached each pressed facing a few inches under the armscye with a couple of small machine stitches on the seamline.

The waist darts in this pattern are probably also a very good thing, but I left them out!  The result is that my top rises and sticks out at the front. This doesn't particularly bother me compared to all the other dramas with zips and stripes. In any case I wanted the top to be a little boxy over the skirt and I made the top long enough (and the skirt high enough) to overlap. If I make this top again I think I'll either include the waist darts or add some length to the front of the top. I guess the alternative would be for me to make some fitting adjustments at the shoulders...

I really like the cut-in angles of the armhole, and the armhole sits at a height on my body which isn't unflattering (ie it's ended up reasonably high cut on me).  However, you can see from the back view that the top needs either a strapless or racer back bra.

Finally I want to mention that if you've never tried a Burda paper patterns, they're worth a try!  I used to subscribe to the Burda magazines, and their brief and cryptic instructions were often quite confusing, but the paper patterns are something entirely different - they come with instruction sheets with all the usual tips as to how to cut out, adjust and sew your pattern, along with a decent amount of words and LOTS of accompanying diagrams. This pattern's instruction sheets were three large pages long. Each page is nearly eight times the size of the envelope, and each page divided into 4 columns: line drawing diagrams in the first column, English instructions in the next, followed by French and Spanish instructions.

_____________

Onto the skirt!

I made the skirt using view C of Vogue 8328, a basic pattern for a pleated knee length skirt that came out in 2006.  It's OOP now, but I can still see the pattern listing on the Vogue patterns website in their OOP section, so I guess it hasn't been out of print too long?  I picked this pattern up for 50 cents in an op shop, but I'm sure there are lots of other similar old and new patterns around that would have worked (skirt patterns don't change that much over time, do they!).

View C of this pattern has a faced contour waistband which fits the skirt from waist to hip, and pleats below the waistband that flare out gently to knee length.  The pattern is not really designed for stripes - the pattern envelope just says you should allow extra fabric for stripes, but curved waistbands and curved hems obviously cut through stripes!  Since I wanted to keep a straight line around the hem of the skirt and I couldn't be bothered hunting out a rectangular pleated skirt pattern, I "translated" the horizontal curves of the skirt's (at hip and hem) to straight lines, with the pleats themselves doing any necessary shaping. I also cut the skirt with a lot of extra width at the side seams in case I'd mis-measured the skirt widths when changing the curves to straight lines.


The first sewing step was to make my pleats and top stitch them down in case the stitching on the inside of the pleats was strained.  Next up I interfaced the contour waistband, overlocked edges, and sewed the waistband to the pleated section. I basted the sides and back together and tried the skirt on - and *&(*!! - it was too small.  The contour waistband would only fit me if I sewed it with tiny seam allowances, and given the fraying I'd had with top, a tiny seam allowance seemed like a recipe for a fall-apart skirt. I had to put it aside and think about it.

The solution I came up with was to ditch the contour waistband completely and just use the pleated skirt section - easy! Without the waistband the pleat top stitching extended to my hip level, which leads to extra volume just below the hips.

Then I interfaced the centre back seam allowance and sewed in an invisible zip - and it looked terrible, with the stripes horribly misaligned.  I unpicked my stitches and had another go, this time with lots of pins on top of the fabric marker I'd used first time around to show where the stripes should line up on the zip. Still horrible... so at this point I folded up the pieces of skirt and moved onto other sewing.  


Several weeks passed; spring was well under way, and I wanted to have the outfit to wear in summer. With encouragement from friends on Instagram, I got the skirt out again and unpicked the zip again, lined the stripes up again, and sewed the zip in again, this time sewing just a couple of centimetres at a time and checking stripe alignment very carefully as I went.  And this time it was good enough.

I pin fit the skirt side seams together on myself and with lots of basting and fitting and adjusting sewed the side seams together.  I curved the seam sharply from waist to hip to meet my body shape, and added a gentle flare from hip to hem.  As with the centre back seam, the stripes don't match perfectly but the matching is good enough!

I forgot to take any absolutely side on photos, but in the below picture you can see the upper part of the side seam - and you can see how my stripe matching isn't perfect :).

I like the way this skirt has enough volume to twirl, and that the straight hem keeps the hem horizontal - you can also see the stripe alignment on the centre back seam in the next photos:

And then all that was left to do was to finish the waist with a lovely pale yellow piece of petersham ribbon on the inside, cut the hem to my preferred length, press and top stitch the hem in place with white thread in hiding in a white stripe.

All in all I'm glad to have persevered - this set took ages from start to finish, but now that I'm happy with the way it looks I'm sure the pain will soon be forgotten!


Thanks for reading, and I hope all your stripes are aligning and zips are working first time around!



See you soon


- Gabrielle xx

Striped Long Sleeve Top: Burda 7066

We got back from our big (more than 6 weeks!) European vacation a few weeks ago, and as those of you who sew can imagine, the urge to sew after being away for that long was very, very strong, even eclipsing my need for sleep. In the first couple of jetlagged days back in Sydney I started 4 new projects - mostly patterns I'd tested before, nothing too tricky - so instead of telling you about what we did in the South of France and Italy, I hope you don't mind if I share my first post-Europe garment.  I know it's very simple:

UpSewLate: Front view, Burda 7066 long sleeved top

Fabric
You probably recognise the fabric - so many Australian sewing bloggers have sewn something with it this year, and many non-bloggers must have too! It's the Jaywalk stretch from Tessuti fabrics; it was on sale in two colourways leading up to this year's Tessuti awards so I bought several metres of each - and I still have some left of both. This fabric is rather stretchy with great recovery and nice drape, but it's quite a heavy fabric. I originally made a dress from the other colourway to enter in the awards, but honestly the fabric is better suited to a top like this or even PJ leggings as I made for my daughter.

Pattern
I used a Burda pattern (BurdaStyle 7066) that I'd picked up on sale at Lincraft a few months ago (seriously, why do I keep buying patterns? I'll never be able to get to them all!).  This pattern is described as an Easy (yes, it is) semi-fitted shirt and dress with broad shoulders, and the pattern illustrations show it to have bust darts, a centre back seam, a choice of round or V-neckline, a choice of sleeve and shirt lengths, and an optional very basic fabric belt. The recommended fabric is jersey, and I don't think this pattern would work in a woven fabric because of the way it's designed to fit (see below).

My timing is a bit off with making a long sleeved top - we arrived back in Sydney to unseasonally cold weather, but the weather quickly changed to summer heat, so I may not get much use out of this top till next year.  Anyway, no matter; I don't have many long sleeved tops that feel like they fit anywhere near well, so I'm sure I'll appreciate this one when the weather cools down again!

UpSewLate: Another view, Burda 7066 long sleeved top

Fitting
I made more effort than usual in fitting this one - there was even an ugly muslin* - and I was very glad to have made a muslin because even though this is an easy sew, there were a few surprises in the pattern. The pattern has dropped shoulders, which weren't apparent to me in the photos and technical drawings, and the sleeves are really tight compared to the fit through the body.  I know this style of top - loose with dropped shoulders and skin tight sleeves - is a bit of a "look", but it's not one I like on myself.  I think dropped shoulders make my narrow shoulders look even smaller, and skin tight sleeves just don't feel good. Needless to say I made a few changes before sewing this up in my Jaywalk fabric.

UpSewLate: Burda 7066 with shoulder fit adjusted

* I say "ugly muslin", but the sewing was decent and in fact, that top fits and apparently looks fine on my mum! She now has both the muslin and the pattern (good luck with it, mum!). Here's what the muslin was like on me - great colour but UGH - weird shoulders, pulling under the arms to the bust, and too-tight sleeves:

UpSewLate: Loved the colour but the fabric and fit were off on this top

Pattern Adjustments
I took an inch out of each shoulder, and took in the body. To do this I translated the arm scye an inch inwards - you could do this by folding out width in the paper pattern, but I just redrew the lines. The shape of the new arm scye is unchanged, but the shoulder seams are now closer to my actual shoulder line, and the body has a closer fit. I also let out the sleeve seams - I sewed these with a 0.5 cm instead of 1.5 cm seam allowance, and graduated out to the 1.5 seam allowance in the body around the bustline.  I'm happy with this fit on my arms and body (apart from the bust darts - they're a bit low on me and I forgot to adjust them upwards!), but I'm still not 100% sure about the shoulders.

UpSewLate: Oh yes, there's that waist - I knew it was there somewhere!

The back view shows some excess fabric so perhaps I am one of the millions that needs a sway back adjustment:

UpSewLate: Back view, Burda 7066 long sleeved top

I made a couple more changed that were less about fit: I lengthened the arms, shortened the body, and removed the CB seam. I made the neckline facing from a different plain black jersey because I was in such a rush to sew that really couldn't be a#$%ed with stripe matching - and you can see clear evidence of that uncharacteristic attitude in the side seams too!

UpSewLate: For once I didn't worry about matching my stripes

Phew! I guess I'm now officially back in blogging mode now!


See you soon
- Gabrielle xx


Oh and a postscript... I mentioned while I was away that I was having trouble commenting on people's blogs due to a login issue, and I'm still having that problem on my mobile phone (which is the medium I use for reading blogs these days). I've been able to comment on a few Disqus-enabled blogs and blogs that accept unauthenticated comments, but otherwise it's been a challenge I haven't managed to conquer. I'm working on it!

Fleece Hoodies

Over the weekend I made my daughter a couple of Burda fleece hoodies.

First up I made a red hoodie, worn on Saturday:

The pattern I used is Burda 9614, a unisex pattern that includes sizes 3 to 13. I sewed a combination of view D (the hoodie) and view A (regular long sleeves as opposed to the layered sleeves of view D) in a size 8, which is intended to fit a child 128 cm tall (just a couple of cm taller than my daughter). The pattern is semi-fitted, and I think it's normally intended for a much lighter cotton jersey BUT it works well in a thicker fabric so long as the fabric has a good amount of stretch, as does this red fleece.

And then I made a checked pink and cream one, worn on Sunday and Monday:

Top stitching fleece is just painful, and I wasn't happy with my stitching on the curved pocket openings and lower line of the red pocket, so I added some seam lines to the pink and cream version with the intention of (1) getting rid of the curves and (2) getting rid of the top stitching. I guess I didn't think it through properly though, so although I did get rid of the curves I still left myself a lot of unpleasant top stitching. Oh well... I've left it as is, and hopefully the kind of people who notice messy top stitching will be distracted by all the check matching - front seams, pocket, side seams, and upper back to sleeve backs..

I've used this pattern (Burda 9614) many times before for both the hoodie and the long sleeved t-shirt pattern, and I really like the fit for a tall, slim child. Using a thick fleece I probably should have gone up a size in widths, as the pink and cream checked hoodie is apparently a bit too snug (this fabric has less stretch than the red fleece). And I should really remember by now that my kids have longer heads than the Burda average - every time I've made this hood it's been a bit short.

Next time I need to make a kid's hoodie I'm thinking to try Burda 9482, which looks - at least in pattern envelope photos - to be a much looser fit, with raglan sleeves and a bigger hood with a raised neckline.

I can't say I particularly enjoy sewing fleece, but sewing these up gives me back a little fabric space, and addresses my daughter's lack of warm jumpers. Is it just me, or is it hard to find proper warm winter RTW jumpers for girls? I haven't been searching that hard, but I get the impression from what I see in the city shops that girls are supposed to look pretty and not feel the cold - all year round. I know girls are tough, but seriously...


Back soon with some selfish sewing!

See you soon
- Gabrielle xx

Sewing for the Kids

There was a long blurrr of sewing in this house last weekend, then another shorter mid-week late night blur. And there are some wearable winter clothes for the kids to show for it:

Birthday dress - 

This dress still needs hemming but it was getting late when I was finishing it off, and I wasn't feeling confident of my little girl's height. It's mostly around a size 6, but a mix of patterns and tweaks. I will explain, promise - but the mixing makes me wonder... at what point of mixing and tweaking patterns does a sewn garment stop being of those patterns and become something else?  I definitely see this dress as the sum of two patterns, and I'm not planning to start omitting pattern accreditations - which seems rude and sort of dishonest to me - but I think it's a theoretically interesting question... I guess I could be swayed by a strong argument.

I used Burda pattern 9979 (OOP I think), a top and pants pattern, for the top part of this dress. I extended sleeves from elbow to wrist length and swapped the turned over sleeve hem for separate little bands (LOVE sleeve bands - so classy!); sleeve shape was tweaked for more of a straight & narrow style. The bodice was lengthened, as the pattern is for a cropped top, but generally I was aiming for a size 6 length and a size 5 width. I also added a neck band - not sure if this was already in the pattern as by this point I wasn't paying it much attention. I used Simplicity 7211 (well and truly OOP) for the skirt part of this dress, graded out to about a size 4 in width and what I hoped was about a size 5 in length from my pattern's size 3. The skirt waist width was only a little bigger than the bodice waist so they just got eased together.

Final touch - a rosebud hand sewn onto centre front neckline. Of course this is the best part of the dress :-) (that's the recipient's perspective).
 
The birthday girl has been sick all week - not even able to contemplate birthday cake - and got herself thinner than usual, but I expect when she's back to normal she'll fill her dress out a bit better.

Leggings - 

Leggings - such easy peasy sewing and they always get worn to death, starting at the knees - what did girls wear before these become so popular? I have a friend who will not allow her daughters to wear them. She thinks they look....ahh...I guess rude? They are definitely not banned in this house, but if they're too thin and clingy they get a skirt or dress on top. Problem solved.

























No pattern required, just traced around a slightly too long pair onto butcher's paper, then had the joy of tipping stretch fabric scraps all over the living room to be selected from.  The stripey pair have joins at about knee length, and the stripe mismatch is intentional.

 

Interestingly for the same "pattern", cut out at the same time, the purple leggings look loose and the striped ones look tight. Obviously I forgot to think about stretch fabric type, stretch recovery and that sort of thing, but it's not affecting their popularity.  I should be making more of having a mini sewing fan in the family! :-)

Long sleeve T -

For most of the year my son seems to need few casual clothes - he seems to live in his school uniform, various sport clothes and PJs. Every now and then of course a lack of something or other becomes apparent. This winter his jumpers / warm long sleeve Ts looked to be lacking in length. He cautiously joined his sister in picking through the fabric scraps, and came up with some tentative choices including the blue merino I used for my own long sleeve T.

This top is made from Burda pattern 9614, style A, in a size 8, pretty much as is + with sleeve and neck bands. The fabric is left over from my own long sleeve T from the same fabric and there wasn't quite enough, so there's a join half way down one sleeve. 

Reluctant to try it on - "no, I'm sure it fits mummy" - then reluctant to take it off :-). 

I've now been asked if I can make a top with geometrical patterns on it; I've got some ideas (who amongst us doesn't???? Ideas isn't the problem!) and if I get to it I'll share it - of course.

See you!