If You Don't Make Mistakes . . .

. . . You don't make anything.

So, even though this shirt is wearable, we'll still chalk this one up to experience.  This is my first version of Butterick 5497.  I made view B, but I like the shirt well enough that I plan to make all of the views eventually.

Also, no flowers in embarrassing places.

I made this top out of a cotton jersey from Fabric.com, and I loved how vintage it felt.  I was saving it for something more interesting than a basic t-shirt, so when Butterick came out with several new patterns over the summer, I decided to jump in.  I think this pattern suits the fabric in that it also looks a little vintage with it's raised waistline, kimono-style sleeves and ballet neckline.  It's a fairly easy and quick sew, and the mistakes I mention above are all due to user error.  Don't you just love it when the world reminds you that you don't know everything?

The major change that I made to this pattern was to alter the back into a single piece that's cut on the fold.  The back of the short-sleeved versions of this top as designed is a deep v-neck held together at the base of the neck by a strip of your fashion fabric.  From the pictures on the Butterick site, it looks like you can wear a regular bra with the top as designed, but I didn't want to take that chance.

I altered the back piece by comparing it to the back piece of view C (the long-sleeved version).  I straightened the v-neck so that it could be cut on the fold and raised and extended the new neckline.  It's not a big alteration, and I can undo it easily if I want to make the back of this pattern as originally drafted.

So, here's where things went awry.  The pattern instructions have you gather the shoulder seams by first sewing the shoulder seam at the seamline and then making a casing for elastic in the seam allowance.  Having just completed Vogue 1020, I decided to use the same method to gather the shoulder seams as in that pattern:  put in rows of gathering stitches, gather to the right length using the elastic guide and serge the seam together.  My first attempt did not go well.  I put the gathering stitches too close to the edge of the fabric, and when I serged the seam, the knife cut off the seam allowance, and the seam didn't gather at all.  This led to my first time having to pick out serged seams, and I'm sure that it won't be the last.

I tried it again, this time putting my gathering stitches inside the seamline.  When I serged the seam this time, it was gathered appropriately.

Here's where I got myself in more trouble.  If you look carefully at the left side of the picture just above the seamline, you can see my gathering stitches.  I got the brilliant idea to pick these out.  Want to guess what happened?  That's right.  All of the gathers came out again.  As a last ditch effort to save this project, I used clear elastic of the appropriate length and sewed it directly to the seamline.  Not pretty from the inside, but it works.

You can't see from any of the pictures, but the shoulder where I had to use the elastic also had a small hole in it that had to be stitched together by hand.

So, it's a cute top, and I think it looks good on.  I am going to give this another try to apply what I've learned now that I know what won't work.  Problem is, I have to figure out what will work.  Maybe I should break down and take that serger class I've been looking at.  Or watch the video that came with my machine.  Or read the instruction book that I picked up.  I feel a little foolish that I thought the hardest thing about using a serger was threading it (not that hard at all) and worrying about cutting my finger off with the knife.  Like I said before, I love when the world lets me know that I don't know everything.  Keeps things interesting.

ETA:  Fixing a small spelling error.