Rae's Peachy Pink Bamboo Knit Top

Here's my top for today:

(JCrew necklace = push gift from Mr Rae)

I'm slowly but surely learning how to work with knits, and trial and error seems to be my best strategy.  I fell in love with this super-soft peach bamboo blend at Field's in West Michigan a couple months ago and decided it would become one of my spring tops.

A little about my design process: I wanted something with a ruffle detail to make the solid-color top a little more interesting, so I basted a 3" ruffle along the neckline before sewing the facing in.

The easiest way to do this is just to cut a really long strip of fabric and stuff it under the presser foot as you go, no gathering or anything like that.  It makes the gathering uneven, which is the look I was going for.  Then I sewed the facing on, turned it right-side out, and tacked down the ruffle along the raw side.  You can see a before/after here:

See?  Doesn't that look better?  I decided not to do it around the armholes though since I wanted the ruffle to function as a sleeve there.

Pattern: I used this top (which I wore all the time until I spilled spaghetti sauce on it...BAH!) as a jumping off point for the pattern. It's loosely based therefore on Anna Maria Horner's Smashing Smock pattern from her book Seams to Me.  Because this knit has so much stretch to it (bamboo/lycra blend, I talk about those more in this baby tights tutorial) I decided to interface the top pieces.  This ended up being a poor decision as it made the seams stiffer and therefore less forgiving.  Oh well, live and learn.

Just to show you another thing, at one point I tried it on backwards just to see what it looked like, and actually really liked how it looked:

please disregard baby food stains on left thigh

The front sweetheart neckline didn't exactly look great on the back though, so I would have had to tear out the whole thing including the ruffle to redo it.  Not worth it.  Plus when Elliot (he's 3 yrs old) saw me wearing it this way, he said, "You sew your shirt on backwards?" That killed it right there.  But doesn't it look kindof cool like this?  I think I'll do this design in a solid voile later.

Here's me rockin it with my skinny jeans and Minnetonkas.

Have you voted yet on today's tops?  Go here to see them in all of their glory.  Voting ends tomorrow at 6 am EST.