SEWN: THE TILT TOP

Did you feel it too?

A slight change in the atmosphere, a tilting of the earth's axis?

No? Just me?

Keepin' it real with my grey roots

Quite the turn up this top is. Those who know me, know my dislike of sewing knit fabrics and my bewilderment towards the hype around ponte in particular.

I've had trouble getting the resurgence in the popularity of sewing with ponte. Ponte is just so... old lady. Yep, I said it. It reminds me of old lady pants (crimplene anyone?) and could not feel more... synthetic-y. Shudder.

And reports seem to suggest it can pill like a crazy thing. Why is this fabric so appealing?

Ok, so it behaves nicely for a knit. Whilst my machine made an awful loud punching sound every single stitch (what is with that?), it fed smoothly with no distortion and no skipped stitches (once I worked out ponte hates ballpoint needles and loves a universal).

So, why my change of heart? I saw this gorgeous fabric on the clearance table at Spotlight. I think it cost me all of about $5 for a 1.3m piece, all that was left on the bolt. I knew it was ponte, but I was drawn to its yummy dark eggplant hue and its spongey thickness. I think this is quite a heavy ponte, by ponte standards. It reminds me a little of scuba knit (which I used here).

And I thought what the heck, if I hate what I make with it, it won't make me cry. And what do you know? I LOOOOOOOOOVE this top!!!

This is Square Top, No. 11 from She Wears the Plants by Yuko Takada.

I've coveted this weird top for some time. But... knit fabrics.

Kirsty and Kate have made gorgeous versions and I knew as soon as I brought this fabric home that it had found its pattern mate.

It's actually designed to be worn two ways and those buttons are meant to be functional. I, however, have no intention of wearing a weird shrug thingy with even weirder empty sleeves just hanging there so I sewed through the overlap to permanently affix my buttons. 

I don't work with plain dyed fabrics very often, preferring bright and generally loud prints. I was feeling a bit hmmmmmm about the top until I figured out the button situation. I actually bought a set of teal green buttons to use along the shoulders at the same time as a dodgy little packet of buttons I planned to use for another project. Guess which ones won? No two buttons are alike, but are the same colours - all jade buttons are the same jade and all orange ones are the same shade of orange, but the actual designs are different. Just the perfect amount of quirk to send a ho-hum make into woooooooohooooooooo territory.

Me checking if the world's axis really had tilted

It's the simple things, right?

And this is why I love sewing. I get to have clothes I just couldn't find in a shop. Clothes that are utterly me. Clothes that if they were in a shop would be in those frighteningly trendy cool kid stores I'd never enter. Or so expensive as to be prohibitive. Hello sub-$10 top.

And I get to wear them with my quirky shoes. A match made in heaven...

I knew you wanted to see them, because all sewists are shoe lovers too, right? Mimco, several seasons old. My pixie shoes.

Are we sure the earth's axis didn't tilt??