BurdaStyle 04/2011 - 118 Top

I had some scraps of polka dot jersey left over from my Style Arc Marita dress, too small to do anything proper with, but too big to just throw away also so I decided to make a top using plain black as a contrast.

Somewhere in my mind I remembered this pattern though it took a while to track it down, it's from the 4/2011 issue of Burda.  It was the colourblocked dress I remembered, but I used the top pattern.

With it's batwing (or are they dolman, is there a difference?) sleeves, it is a bit 1980's, but I am lacking in long sleeve tops and this is super quick and easy to make.



It should be possible to whip this top up in about an hour, but I ran into problems with the overly wide neckline.  Much as I am a fan of Burda I often have problems with their necklines being too wide or low, I should know better by now, but I didn't realise until I tried on the top quite how wide the neck was - on me it was ridiculous and only just balanced on the edge of my shoulders!

I messed about with adding a neckband but that didn't look right so in the end opted for the quick fix of changing the shoulder line as you can see from the row of pins in the photos below.

The original neckline is just turned and stitched, but after making the change above I found it difficult to get a nice finish at the corners so I faced the neckline with a strip of the jersey instead and topstitched that down with a twin needle.  The hems are just turned and twin needled.

The only other change I made was to shorten the sleeves because my scrap piece wasn't wide enough.  I could have added contrast bands, but just wanted to get it finished after the neckline hoo ha so I have 7/8 sleeves.  The original pattern sleeves are very long, I'd have needed to shorten them in any case.

So, it took much longer than it should have to make this simple top, but I like how this turned out.  It's a good pattern for using up smaller pieces of jersey, just beware of the neckline width.

Batwings!