Maria Denmark day-to-night top

A recent "find" in my blog stalking  is Sew Busy Lizzy.  Lizzy is a talented seamstress and writer who's blog is on my "favourites" list.  Recently Lizzy posted about Maria Denmark day-to-night-top.  Lizzy LOVES this top and pattern.  After my success with the Sewaholic's Renfrew top (and whilst in my sewing frenzy of a couple of weeks ago) I decided to take Lizzy's advice and buy the pattern.  It is a downloadable pattern - so I was patterned up and ready to go in next to no time.  I had purchased a metre of jersey knit from Lincraft the day before in anticipation of something - and this was its something!  An hour later - top number four for the week.

 

This is a very easy pattern to sew up. It did take me awhile to work out what "invisible" elastic is - now I'm still not sure, but I think it is the clear elastic I use for dance costumes - which we call dance elastic over here.  As for the fold over elastic Maria suggests you use - I haven't come across that yet.  I did forget to add seam allowances, but in hindsight this was a good think, as the top would have been a little baggy if any bigger.  I also didn't use elastic on the back neck edge and armholes as suggested.  This was mainly because I didn't have any black elastic thin enough in my stash and I figured the fabric was stable enough to get away with no elastic.  I just turned over the raw edge and stitched with a twin needle.  Whilst this is ok, I will add the elastic to the armholes on my next top, just to see the difference.  I also bound the back neck edge with a strip of the fabric.

 

Apologies for not "modelling" the top myself - but I'm not clever enough to take my own photos and my 9 year old photographer was nowhere to be found when I was wearing it.  It has already had two outings!

 

Details:

 

Pattern:  Maria Denmark's Day-to-night drape top about $7.00 downloadable

Fabric:  Jersey knit 1.5 metres @ $19.99/metre = $30.00

Notions:  thread from stash

Total:  $37.00