The Dreaded Step 12

One night while the hubby was in Hawaii for work, I decided to work on Simplicity 2283.  I had originally wanted to make View E, which is the one shown on the model with the vest.  However, it turns out I did not buy enough of the fabric I intended to use for the top – I only bought a yard.  It was an expensive, not-on-sale knit fabric that I bought at Jo Ann’s when I was up in NY for my sister’s bridal shower, back in May.  So ultimately, I decided to make View A of the top, since it required an amount of fabric that I possessed.

I had high hopes for a quick project with this one.  It was, in fact, fairly easy compared to a lot of the things I seem to choose to make.  The first thing I had to do was set the pleats.  This was kind of a pain in a knit fabric, and so I was careful to baste them in properly.  The blue arrows point at the pleats, though they are mirrored on both sides of the top.  Hard to see the pleats with the print on the fabric.  I also folded over the cowl neck line area and ironed it, as well as did an overcasting stitch on its edges.

I didn’t take a lot of pictures of the progress on this project because it was not too complicated.  Only took pictures of the more difficult parts.  I think at this point, I had to put a neck facing on the back of the top at the neckline.  Very similar look to a narrow hem when all is said and done, however it starts as a separate piece of fabric.  It is important to note that I used the tissue paper trick I’ve learned to prevent wavy seams, since I was working with a knit fabric.  The next few steps involved attaching some interfacing to the shoulder yoke pieces, and then attaching one yoke piece to each shoulder.  The purpose of this piece was to bridge the front piece of the top to the back piece.  Getting through the first yoke piece on each side of the top was easy enough with the instructions.

Then I reached the dreaded Step 12.  This was one of those instructions that required pictures to show you exactly how bad it was.  You all know how I feel about this shit.

All I got out of this picture was some indication of which way the yoke piece was to be attached.  The weird top down view of the shirt is odd.  Plus, the words “YOKE FACING” … really the yoke piece and the yoke facing piece were flipping identical.  Throwing that extra word “facing” in there was just not necessary.  Only more confusing.  And the bit that I understand about facings … is that I hate them.  Grunt.

So I figured maybe reading the words would help.

Not a bit of help.  Well I lied.  The part where it talks about “sandwiching front and back between the yoke and facing” was a bit helpful.  It was what made me decide to do this (see below), regardless of what the heck the pattern said.  It was time to “wing it”.  I figured if I could put a costume like Project Breyna together, I could certainly figure out some appropriate way to finish this top.

The right side of the photo shows what a shoulder looked like after the first yoke piece was attached.  I put right side of this yoke to the right side of the “yoke facing” and stitched them together along the side of the piece with the arrow.  The left side of the photo shows what the yoke looks like once I turned the yoke inside out.  From there, I made sure to put the seams from the first yoke piece “sandwiched between” the two pieces, and I stitched along the top and bottom edges.  I also basted the final side edge together.  This edge would later be covered by the armhole facing, attached in a similar manner to the back neck facing. I finished seams on the top and bottom edges of the yoke at this point too.

Once the nasty yoke part was done, I stitched the sides together and hemmed the bottom of the top, and voila!

Even though I managed to fill the week of my vacation with posts, I may not be so lucky about the week after vacation, since my sewing projects have been nonexistent while I am attending Orkfest 2012…