Another quick sew project to make up for all of the lost productivity on my Donna Karan jacket … I pulled this one out of my pattern stash and located a knit fabric that I thought would compliment the style.  I chose a poly-rayon-lycra print from my stash, purchased this past spring at JoAnn on sale.  I don’t usually buy fabric at JoAnn, but I really liked this print and bought 2 yards.  This yardage was a tad shy of the yardage recommended on the package … but you know how I feel about that, if you read my post on getting the most use out of your yardage.

For starters, I *mostly* followed the layout instructions, except for the last drape piece (the one that goes under).  I accidentally started to cut the piece with the wrong side of the print (down instead of up), so it was backwards.  Oops … what now?  This is where my first deviation from the instructions occurred … I decided to piece this section together.  I cut along a line that would be hidden under the top drape, overlapped and pinned the sections, before using my coverstitch in a twin needle configuration to sew them together.  Once that happened, I cut and used the piece normally.

My deviations did not stop here.  I was also unimpressed with the construction steps, so I assembled most of the top in an entirely different order.

  1. Sew basting for ruching
  2. Sew drapes to neckline in one seam (vice separately).  First, I pinned the pieces at the center of the neckline “V”, with a small piece of stay tape, and stitched about one inch on either side of the pivot point with a sewing machine.  Following that, I clipped to the “V” and sewed the entire length with my serger configured with a 4-thread overlock.