Butterick 4985 Top - Finished

Here is my completed top/jacket. It's freezing here at the moment (well relatively at least since we don't have any central heating here) and the idea of even trying on this short sleeve top is not fun so the photo of me wearing it was taken rather quickly. I am really happy with the top and am looking forward to wearing it when I go to lovely, hot Australia on Thursday for the Chinese New Year holiday. Here is a clearer photo.

The fabric originally came from Spotlight (the Aussie homeware store) in Singapore last year. The hardest part of making this top was matching the pattern on the fabric. I cut in a single layer, piece by piece, with the centre of the pattern running down the centre front and back of the top. I made no attempt to try and match at the side, shoulder and armhole seams - I think it would be impossible to match everywhere and it was making my head hurt thinking about it! You can see the final placement of the ribbon is slightly different to my earlier little sketch. I decided to keep to vertical lines only, including on the sleeve which gives it a more sporty look than most asian style tops.

I hit my usual problem of trying to find fastenings I was happy with. I considered using some Chinese buttons, but felt it looked too similar to tops readily available in the markets here (nothing wrong with that, but if I am going to the effort of making it, it may as well look a bit different). Finally I settled on cover buttons and I did my best to match the buttons to the fabric they ended up sitting on to keep the closure as invisible as possible (wrinkly photo below). The advantage of doing all that pattern matching means that when I wear this shirt as a jacket, the buttons also sort of match the fabric underneath. I again swapped the sleeve of the pattern to Vogue jacket 8331 which keeps the volume without quite as much puffiness!

I really like this pattern, it's very versatile. This is the 3rd time I have made it and I'm sure there will be more.