New top complete!

I've been thinking I should try wearing belts, as I'm top-heavy. What say you?

I've talked in the past about my clothing spreadsheet. I'd done it in the past for a couple of years, and since 2019 I've been tracking what I wear every day, mainly as a way of seeing what I actually wear and is therefore worth spending money on, as opposed to what I imagine myself wearing but leave unworn. 

I'm very easily led when it comes to clothes. I see things that my friends would love and want to wear them because my friends would approve. I also don't like feeling like people are looking at me on the street. So covid lockdown in 2020 was a bit of a gift in that regard as I had months to dress without considering other people's tastes. That's when the spreadsheet really started to come into its own. In a weird way, my hypothyroid weight gain also helped, because I had to buy new clothes I could fit into, which forced me to think about what I really wanted. Bit of a mixed blessing, that one!

Anyway, it turns out my tastes are incredibly basic, when it comes to shape, at least. (When it comes to fabric, give me velvet, give me jacquard, give me anything but basic.) I love a vest top. I live in them in the summer, and they're great for layering in winter. However, a lot of the commercially-available ones are jersey, and for some reason I have a real knack of getting indelible stains on them. I do not know how this happens. They just won't wash out. Even Vanish doesn't work. I'm trying a new experiment and rubbing washing up liquid into marks before washing, which seems to be helping. So my thinking is, it's a lot easier to get marks out of woven fabric, so I need to make some woven-cloth vest tops.

I started with New Look 6543 and an old bedsheet, which I used for a test run as I always have to adjust patterns to fit narrow shoulders/full bust/lower bust point. That worked pretty well, and I sewed it with black thread and dyed it black when it was complete so it'd be good round-the-house wear. This version, my second, was made using the adjusted pattern from a piece of fabric that I think was a gift from Gisela. 

The pattern called for a neck facing, but I made my own bias tape and used that for an edging instead, on the inside. The results aren't 100% perfect as getting the point on a v-neck exactly right is tricky, but they're good enough, and I'll get better with practice. The lace was some I had left over from another project and covers up any mistakes anyhow. Mr Robot hates purple, but I thought dammit, I'm going to wear purple if I want. It's a true Cadbury purple, a real goth purple, and I figured if I was going to wear this shade there was no point pretending it wasn't goth, so I might as well go the whole hog and slap some black lace on it. 

I'm really pleased with the finished top. It's comfortable. It's a great colour. With any luck marks will wash out easier than they do from jersey. I'll definitely be using this pattern again, and am considering experimenting with a version done on the bias.