The Sailor Top by Fancy Tiger

The nice thing about Indiesew is that you’re always stumbling onto new patterns to try. The Sailor Top by Fancy Tiger isn’t new in the sense that it has just been released, but new to me. I always know which patterns have been released recently, but it’s often much more difficult to discover patterns that have been out there for a while.

The Sailor Top is a cute short-sleeved raglan top with a yoke and gathers below the neckline. The sleeves are finished with a facing and the yoke consists of an outer and an inner yoke, making for a clean finish at the neckline. The Sailor Top comes with a generous 5/8″ seam allowance, making it easy to finish the top with French seams or to adjust the fit of the top a little while sewing. What I really like about the Sailor Top is its symmetrical it look: The wide yoke, the wide facing at the sleeves and the wide hem allowance are about the same width, giving the top a coherent look. I love attention to detail!

I used a thin loosely woven viscose from Stoff & Stil – the same viscose I used as lining for my pretty Kerry Cape by Designer Stitch. It’s very soft and flowy, but sewing with it drove me crazy. I think a big part of it was that I had little time to sew the Sailor Top and was rushing through, instead of taking the time it needs to work with a delicate fabric like this.

In hindsight I should have starched the whole fabric to make it more stable while working with it. My pattern pieces didn’t keep its shape at all – something I noticed when sewing the yoke. I realized that I had used the front yoke pieces as facings for the sleeves – and I hadn’t even noticed! I had noticed that the facing was a little long, but the fabric was so loosely woven that I didn’t notice it had the wrong shape. And it doesn’t look too bad, does it?

I should have considered interfacing the outer yoke, and unterstitching the yoke. The instructions for the Sailor Top are fine, I didn’t have any problems assembling the top. But there could have been a few more details like understitching and things alike to make for an even cleaner finish. That being said, I think interfacing and understitching would not have been necessary with  a slightly more stable fabric.

I have French-seamed the whole top, and it looks really nice on the inside, except for the inside of the yoke – it looks really bad! The yoke didn’t keep its shape and folding it correctly and topstitching it was a nightmare. I really should re-do it, we’ll see. For now – no inside pics!

It was super windy when I took the pics, so I had to “hide” behind a shed. You can still see that the top isn’t hanging nicely on every pic, but there’s little you can do with the weather, right?

– As part of the Indiesew Blogger Team, I received the Sailor Top pattern for free. However, all opinions are, as always, my own. –