Anita Tie Top

For those of you who are interested, I thought I'd give a bit more detail about the Anita Tie Top I made recently. I drafted it myself using the bodice block from Sew Over It Vintage (review here).

You can see from the diagram below that the original block is slightly shaped at the waist, (line H/I/E). For the Anita top, all you do is square the side seams off for a looser fit (line H to M). As I wanted a slightly more fitted look, I kept the original shaped waist, then joined point E to point M (M is the hip line). This gives a little bit of shaping, but leaves enough ease to create the gathers around the waist.

My version of the top still turned out looking quite a bit shorter than the example in the book. What happened was that the original bodice block finished noticeably higher than I was expecting (probably because of my bust taking up too much room). I made a mental note to lengthen the block by a couple of inches before I drafted the Anita top, but never actually wrote this down. You can probably guess the rest, the mental note flew straight out of my head, never to return, and I forgot to lengthen it, doh! I think the finished top is fine though, and on me I actually prefer it sitting on my hips instead of lower down - it gives the illusion of longer legs!

Original Anita Tie Top in Sew Over It Vintage

My (inadvertently) shorter version

The one other tiny change I made was the height of the shoulder/kimono sleeve. The pattern calls for a lightweight, drapey fabric and although Tana Lawn has a beautiful, silky hand, it isn't as drapey as a silk or rayon. Consequently, the kimono sleeves looked a bit wing-like at the shoulders. All I had to do to remedy this was to lower the outer edge of the shoulder opening by about an inch, tapering to nothing in the middle of the shoulder.

The front and back pieces are identical so it's a very simple top to sew together. 

For fabric I used a Liberty Lawn (Capel in navy). As Liberty fabric is quite wide, I managed to cut the front, back and bottom band out of the measly half metre I had in my stash. I was thinking I wouldn't bother with the ties, but once I'd made the top, I realised it needed the ties to give it that chic 1920's vibe. There was a hitch though, Capel fabric in navy is either out of print or exceedingly scarce, as I couldn't find any anywhere. In desperation, I sent a begging email to Susan at Sewbox as I knew she stocked a good range of Liberty prints. By an absolute miracle, she happened to have a remnant of  navy Capel print squirrelled away (it wasn't listed on her site). She wouldn't accept any money for it either, she was just happy to help out - sewing folk are so lovely sometimes aren't they?! Once again, THANK YOU Susan!

It's quite difficult to see the tie belt amidst all that floral, but it's essentially sandwiched into the seams at both sides of the bottom band. The tie is then wrapped around at the back and tied at one side.

Bottom band and ties

It's worth noting that the grainline of the ties runs perpendicular to the long edges, which means you need fabric that's at least 1.4m or 55 inches wide. This is especially important if you have a directional print. Liberty fabric is a fraction under 1.4m wide so I just about got away with it.

I'm so pleased that my experiment in pattern drafting resulted in such a lovely, wearable top. There's a gap in my wardrobe for semi-posh tops that can be worn with jeans and this fits the bill perfectly. My next version will be in a solid colour as I suspect this style will look great with a statement necklace.  Have a good weekend! x