Quartz

Hey hey,

I've got another quick knit top for you all today.  But first, a little back story.  A couple weeks ago I fell down a very different sewing hole than I normally do.  French sewing books.  I fell in love with a top amongst other projects in this book (Grains de Couture: Hommes & Femmes) and even though I couldn't find a translated version and to be quite honest, this was more than I would normally spend since it was in Euros, I found myself pulling the purchase-trigger.

 

I have to say though, for as much as I was wondering if I was going to regret purchasing this book, I loved it even more when it arrived.  It has several patterns for both women and men and also has variations for each pattern.  The book itself is very large, hard covered, has beautiful pictures, quality paper, color-coded layered patterns (spread out over the front and back of two separate pattern sheets) and a very informative appendix... that would be perfect if it was in english, lol.  Thankfully I typically don't rely too hard on pattern instructions anyways and I know french well enough to get through it (for the most part).  However, it would be nice to be 100% confident that I'm really getting everything out of all the information packed into this book.

To give you a little flavor of the french in this book and also as an intro into my make, here is the description of the Quartz racer back I decided to make:

And here's my version:

I was using up fabric scraps from this midi-maxi dress I made last year, so there is definitely less length and fullness in my version, but we'll call this a wearable muslin because I think it came out mostly OK.  Unfortunately with the fabric being so white, it's hard to really photograph.

 

The fabric has a a burnout wide stripe pattern to it, which I played around with a bit, but again, I was working with fabric scraps, so I couldn't quite do everything I wanted.  In general though I tried to make sure that the top and bottom of the front and back all have stripes going in different directions so I didn't have to worry about pattern matching.  The one exception to that of course was the top yoke, which I pieced to make a chevron.  Also I know this is probably a little bit of an extreme comparison, but the vertical stripes on the yoke kind of reminded me of this guy:

So I wanted to make sure those stripes ended up in the back.  

The one other change I made was to sew the strap closed.  If I had followed the pattern I was supposed to leave the strap long and tie it into a bow, but when I did that the twill tape just had too much body.  As a result the bow was looking too...big... and floppy... and generally all over the place, so I took that out.  Unfortunately you can see where I sewed it up on the back right strap.  I thouuuught I had position my little 'secret' fix to be under the top of the yoke, but clearly I didn't.  Oh well.

In other news, look at the pattern variation this book has for this top... a Quartz halter dress.... Soooo pretty... I definitely want to give it a go at some point: 

Anyways, that's all for now.  Hope everyone has a great week!

Kten

*FYI, I purchased this book on my own with my own money. I was not asked to review it and as such this is not a sponsored review in any way.  I just thought I would share my new 'toy' with you all :o).