Oversew the environment, the neck and the stocking

Oversew the environment, the neck and the stocking on in front of the piece on in front of right (law)....  That was translation #1 (You just gotta love all of the online translation programs out there!).   It really wasn't terribly helpful, so I went for translation #2:
Blend before left 2 and right 1 before using the tags A and B.  Maintain with a surpiqure fantasy....
What?  You still don't understand, you say?  Me neither.  On to #3:
Superimpose two front left and right front one by using the reperes A and B.  Maintain with fancy stitching...
Now we're talking!   Sort of.  I think....   Or maybe I could just toss the directions in the trash and wing it...

Thankfully, this delightful Au Bonheurs des Petites Mains (The happiness of small hand) pattern is easy enough to figure out without going through too many "Huh?" moments in translation. My high school French ("la plume de ma tante...") was rather lacking in helpfulness here.   It helped a LOT that Dorothy and shams had gone before me, with their beautiful versions and supremely helpful reviews.  Dorothy K's review  and Shams' review.  Seriously, I could NOT have done this without their help!  Actually, I really, seriously could not have done this without them, since Au Bonheur (hereinafter known as ABdPM) has gone out of business, and the only way I could get my mitts on this pattern was because Shams generously traced off my size for me (hugz!).   And she got her copy from Dorothy.  So if you  like this pattern, grab any copy you find!  Actually, that holds true for ANY ABdPM pattern.


The bad stuff:  I spent a ridiculous amount of time tweaking the fit, piecing together my too small bits of material scraps, futzing with serged edges (I really need some practice at that...), and wandering off in my own direction & trying to figure out where I was going.  The good news is that I was able to muddle through it all, and I ended up with a top I really love!

It's wonderful to have pictures of this top as it really looks made up, because the illustration with the pattern looks a bit different than the finished top, and the line drawing doesn't look even remotely like the finished product!

This version shows the front seam angled; it is not - it's straight up and down.
The overlay is a little angled - on my version the overlay looks more angled than it really is on the pattern; mine ended up like this because I needed to take it in more at the side seams in order to get it to lie flat.  (It's called artistic license.  Or correcting a stupid mistake.   Take your pick)  ;-)

I made SO many fitting tweaks on this pattern that I'm sure I can't remember them all.  And even after I was sewing my altered pieces, I made more changes, so my pattern pieces are totally marked up, and I'm sure I'll need to correct them some more when (yes, when, not if) I make it again.   My usual forward, sloping, and narrow shoulder adjustments.   I raised the armscye (which is quite low), and did heaven-knows-what-all to the side seams.   The pattern (I think) calls for overlapping the front & back halves & doing a "fancy stitch" to join them.  I took a seam, because I didn't want to mess it up royally on step one.


One of the really wonderful aspects of this pattern is that the pieces are all quite small, and you can raid your scrap bin and use up all of the pieces you love too much to recycle elsewhere.  I actually pieced together both the front and back pieces of the print in order to get large enough pieces of fabric.

See the seam?   :)

My next issue showed up when I realized that my knits were too flimsy to hold the asymmetric bits that extended at the neckline - they just flopped over!   Dorothy had the same problem with her first tee; she underlined everything, I decided to simply interface the top portions of each piece with fusible interfacing:

It did the trick :)

My next issue came with the serger.  First I had to put an order in for more serger thread.  I ordered a TON when I first stocked up, but since turquoise is not really one of "my" colors, that wasn't in the pack.   I'm expanding my palette these days.  (No more red hair & all....I'm willing to try anything now.   "When I am old, I shall wear purple...and turquoise, and teal, and....whatever I feel like) ;-)  Once I settled on the colors to use, I still had (have) my issues with neat finishes on the ends of a serged edge.  An hints or tips to help me practice this?  I've seen tips that involved pulling the thread through with a crochet hook, but I just don't get it :(.  I'm going through the Fray Check in the meantime.


Of course, I didn't make it any easier on myself when I decided, on a whim, to add this little square on the top tag after it had already been sewn & serged.  Y'all know, I'm sure, how tricky it can be to merge a new serged edge over a previously serged edge.

It's a little messy, but not so bad that
I can't live with it.

You will rarely see me in a cap sleeve, but when summer hits, short sleeves & even sleeveless are almost necessities sometimes (even in our naturally air conditioned Bay Area weather), so I decided to make the sleeves just a little longer & go with.  Besides, the sleeves on this pattern are  just so darned cute!    I extended the sleeves both in length and width, but they ended up being not nearly wide enough to give enough comfortable movement.  Since I was also at the tail end of my black fabric, I opted to cut an additional piece for the center of the sleeves, rather than re-cutting the two-piece sleeve.  Here are the original pattern pieces (plus my new center piece) laid over the 3 pieces of fabric that I ended up with (You may need to biggify to see the pattern pieces):

This means I ended up with a harlequin look on the sleeves - I like it :)


Bottom line?  I really love this pattern, and can see using parts of it over and over in other patterns.    It was definitely worth all of the tweaking :)

Do you have any ABdPM patterns hiding in your stash, yet to be sewn?  Time to drag them out, sew them up and share!