I mentioned that Jon said one of my recent makes (a top for me) looked like a clown costume. After he said that, I couldn’t look at my top without thinking of it that way and it was a real bummer. But I hung the shirt up in a place I could see it and I looked at it and examined it every day for a week. After that week, I decided Jon was nuts and that I liked the top after all.

I used the Violet Top pattern by Colette Patterns. I used some stretch poplin from fabric.com and the color is not what I thought it was going to be. It’s a lot brighter and I was going for a more subdued yellow, but the fabric was cheap and I think it goes ok with my Ginger skirt.
The fitting of this top was a little hard. I went with a size 8, because that’s the size I used for my Ginger skirt. I made a muslin first (actually, two muslins!) and that was good because the 8 fit in the arms and across the back, but it was like a tent in the bust and in the torso.
I did a small bust adjustment (actually, Jon helped me with that because it was blowing my mind.) and also moved the bust dart up. The bust dart was sitting below my bust. I read some other reviews that said the same thing about the bust dart.
Then I graded the side seams down to a size 2. I also added a little bit of length to the top, and if I make it again I think I’ll add more because it’s on the short side.

I messed the collar up a little bit. On the muslin, I realized later that I had overlapped the front more than the pattern said to. So I shortened the collar to accommodate, but I shortened it too much. I’ll have to fix that for next time.

I also took some width out of the sleeves. They’re still pretty full even after that, so they are some wide sleeves for the view I made. But I like ’em.

Oh, one other thing was that I hate facings that aren’t sewn down securely, so I tucked the facing under all along the fronts and around the collar and sewed it down.
I think that’s it.
I think this is a good dressy top for me and clown costume or not, I’m going to wear it!
