Melly Sews Hi Lo Top and MMM'14

On the last day of April I decided I'd sign up for Me Made May again this year. Last year was my first year and I really enjoyed it, much more than I thought I would. I found that I hardly had to think about reaching for me-made as it's automatic and also it identified the gaps in my wardrobe. Plus, there's of course the great big bonus that I get to connect with lots and lots of lovely like-minded sewing fanatics all over the world, yay!

So here's my pledge:

 'I, Jo of Bubala sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '14. I endeavour to wear at least one item made by me each day and once a week a whole outfit (excluding underwear, shoes and socks) for the duration of May 2014'

I will posting a pic each day on my Instagram feed then hopefully do a round-up here after each week has passed. Anyone who's done MMM before will know that the photo taking is the hardest part!



I wore this top on day 2 and thought it was time I blogged about it before it falls apart through over-wear :-) I made this a couple of months ago and it's been in regular rotation ever since.

The pattern is the lovely free 'Hi Lo top' by Melly Sews. From the moment I saw this pattern I thought I'd love it, so I downloaded and printed it and waited for the right fabric to jump out at me :-) The pattern comes in only one size, but I think it would be reasonably easy to change a bit. I'm about a size 10/12 Australian (bust 34") and it fits well.



I love the overall shape of this top and it's been perfect for our autumn weather when you need a little extra coverage. One change I made to the pattern was to add a casing to the sleeves and thread elastic through. I have done this with other tops and it's worked well. I don't particularly like sleeves just hanging and find the elastic comfortable.



The other change I made was to add some pin tucks to the front. I love the look of pin tucks and hadn't tried them before so thought this would be a good pattern to try them on.

I used this tutorial, applying the pintucks to my flat (uncut) piece of fabric. I then placed the bodice pattern piece on the fabric so that the pintucks are in the upper centre of the piece. I then cut out the other pattern pieces and sewed them together as usual, applying the binding to the neckline as usual, which covers the raw ends of the pintucks. I choose to do 7 pintucks (my lucky number ;-) and just eyeballed how long I wanted them. As I'd done the pintucks before cutting out the pattern I didn't add any width to compensate for the width they take up, but if you were to cut them out first I'd consider adding a bit (about 1.5 cm in this case as each pintuck is about 2mm). Though, having said that, these pintucks are so tiny that if you had a loose fitting top you wouldn't necessarily need to bother. It looks like mine are straining a bit in the pic above but it's just that I'm stretching my arm out to take the selfie :-) I had so much fun doing the pintucks and will definitely be adding them to other garments in future!

The fabric I used was a Japanese lawn from Spotlight that I bought on sale and stashed away for the perfect project. I have used several of their lawns now and find them really comfortable to wear, quite strong but with a lovely drape. They also wash really well. I find it so annoying when fabrics suffer greatly from laundering. I do seem to find that Japanese made fabrics are superior to others. Gross generalisation but that's my finding so far. Do you agree?