The black floral textured knit princess top

Now, where was I with my fitting saga? Oh, yeah! I had just done that blue floral lycra blouse. Based on the fit of that one, I tweaked a few more numbers and settings and prepared to sew another top. But I r.e.a.l.l.y wanted a knit top to wear when the weather becomes a bit cooler (soon?) so I decided to test the new numbers by sewing a Princess-seamed top.

The front is an armscye princess, and the back is shoulder princess. BTW, do you have to capitalize 'Princess' when you are just talking about seams, as opposed to royalty? I am gonna go with 'NO'.

Anyway, despite my own best advice, I chose to make this a V-neck, because I like V-necks. I figured I would use a facing...even though I don't really like facings in knits...and that would make the V-neck ok. Well, it didn't. But lemme back up...



I used 1" of bust ease for this draft. I wasn't sure whether or not I should SCALE the pattern...reduce it in size...to account for the stretch of the fabric, or if just using less ease would be enough. So I went with less ease and printed and cut.

The top was huge.

So I scaled the pattern and ripped and recut the fabric.

Since my fabric stretched from 10" to 14", I determined that was 40% stretch. So, in the PATTERN EDITOR part of Boutique, I scaled the pattern 1% for each 10% of stretch...which means I scaled the pattern 4%.

*
*

This is a really complicated way of saying that I PRINTED the pattern at 96% of its original size.
This seemed to fit better...good.

Now for the neck. I interfaced my facing and sewed it to the neck, then understitched and pressed. Then I tried it on. Eeegad! It was awful! The facing had also been printed at 96%, just as the other pattern pieces had been. Well, this was a bad idea! And now that I think about it, it become obvious 'why'.

The REASON you scale the pattern down in the first place is so that, after it stretches, it will fit as designed. But by using a facing that was stabilized at 96%, I was PREVENTING the neck area from stretching to its desired size...the neck was stable and didn't stretch like the fabric all around it did! If I were to do this again, I would NOT scale the facing, but print it at 100%...then I would stretch the garment neckline to fit the facing when sewing. That way, the end result would be proportional.

I ended up binding the neck with some black swimsuit fabric from my stash. It sounds easy enough, but the neck fiasco used up two days of my life that I'll never get back!

Here's what I used:

Style Name: _0_0922_nrrwrBSW_princess_4knit
Date: 9/22/2009
Chart: nrrwrBSW_longrCFL 9-16_Trish_

Garment Type: Blouse
Front Neckline: Curved Vee
Back Neckline: Jewel
Front Darts: Armscye Princess
Back Darts: Shoulder Princess
Sideseam Shape: Fitted

Front Neckline Depth: 5.5
Back Neckline Depth: 1
Neckline Width: 0.25
Neckline Point: -0.25

Armhole Depth: -0.5
Dart Override: 0

Side/Arm Point: -0.5
Side/Waist Point: 0.75
Side/Hip Point: 0

Bust Pt Vertical: 10.5
Bust Pt Horizontal: 5
Upper Front Dart Length: 1.25
Upper Back Dart Length: 0
Lower Front Dart Length: 8
Lower Back Dart Length: 6.5
Back Shoulder Dart Length: 3.5

Sleeve Cap Ease: 0.17
Sleeve Cap Height Adj: -0.75
Front Armhole Shape Down: -0.8 clicks
Front Armhole Shape Right: -0.2 clicks
Back Armhole Shape Down: -0.5 clicks
Back Armhole Shape Left: -0.2 clicks


Seam Allowance: 0.375
Hem Allowance: 2
Facing Width: 2

Chest Ease: 1
Waist Ease: 3
Hip Ease: 4


Body Measurements

Chest Circumference: 41.5
Back Shoulder Width: 17.75
Neck Circumference: 14.25
Natural Waist: 34
Hip Circumference: 42
Crotch Length: 29
Height: 66
Weight:
Bra Cup Size: B
Center Front Length: 15.75
Front Shoulder Width: 15.5
Front Shoulder Slope: 19.125
Shoulder Length: 5.5
Center Back Length: 16.75
Back Shoulder Slope: 18.25
Bicep Circumference: 12

BTW, another eegad! Look at my hair! I wanted a trim..."take out some of the fullness in the back...but I don't want short hair." This is what I got. Again.