As soon as I finished my Kelly green Archer, I knew I wanted to make another sleeveless Archer right away, but this time in a flowy silk. I have many silks in my stash and auditioned quire a few for this make. This sheer, Swiss dot-esque silk from Metro Textiles in NYC practically jumped out at me. It’s drapey, it’s silky, it’s sheer and it has a Swiss dot look? How much more perfect could it be??? It was exactly what I was looking for to make my next Archer.
First things first though, I needed to adjust the back pattern piece to accommodate my bum. If you will recall, I had to add a side seam gusset mid-project for the green cotton shirt. For this and any future make, I widened the back pattern piece to a avoid the complications of adding a gusset.
I also raised the dart on the front pattern piece thinking that it was too low after altering the pattern to be sleeveless. WRONG! The too low dart on the green shirt was purely a product of the fabric. On this silk version, the dart is now too high. Unfortunately, the silk does not take kindly to needle marks and I had to leave the too-high dart as is. Sigh. It’s not too disturbing as long as I wear only a certain bra with this top. So going forward, I will test where the dart falls before sewing it up as the fabric greatly changes where the dart lies, for whatever strange reason.
Unfortunately, I had a several issues while making this version. First and foremost, this is a slippery silk. It was really shifty. I kept having to use the paper patterns to recheck that the cut pieces hadn’t gone all wonky. Secondly, as mentioned earlier, the dart turned out high. Thirdly, I accidentally cut a large hole into my outer back yoke while grading the seam. Doh! I had to cut out all three yoke and back pieces over again as I had graded the seams and the shifty silk made it hard to match up the seam lines again. What a pain!
Fourthly, I didn’t have quite the right buttons for this make in my stash. I auditioned some glass buttons.
But they didn’t seem quite right to me. Then I thought of covered buttons, but I didn’t have the right size in the stash. All my kits were too large.
So I had to wait until today to hit my local fabric store to find a button to suit this project. But patience is apparently a virtue and I did find the right buttons.
But despite those issues, this shirt is exactly what I envisioned it to be. Flowy, silky, sheer, cute. Seriously it’s exactly what I set out to make. Well, except for the too high darts, but we’re just going to ignore them, right?
I love this fabric and I love this top. Here’s how it looks on.
A peek at the binding…
And one more pic for good measure.
And just for kicks, here’s a picture of me and the little boy who lives with me at Easter. This dress goes way back. I love the magic closet. The bloom had faded on this dress for me even before I moved out to San Diego and yet, after a long hiatus, it seemed perfect for Easter. Go figure.
Happy sewing everyone!
