This is a relatively new unisex pattern which has lots of wearing ease. The pattern has 2 views, View A features a button up placket, and View B a classic shirt placket.
I’ve decided to start a weekly plus-size pattern roundup where every Sunday I’ll share 4 patterns; some new patterns and some old patterns that you might have missed or forgotten about!
What will be included?
This list will be entirely subjectively organised based on things that I like, but I’d love to have your suggestions (because I don’t know every plus-size sewing pattern out there).
In order to be included, the patterns will need to have either bust or hip measurements of over 50″, but preferably they’ll have both.
Without further ado, here’s Sunday plus-size pattern roundup #1
There are multiple views & options available for this pattern: cropped length body, short sleeve, mid-length body, 3/4 sleeve, tunic length body and long sleeves. All have dropped shoulder and a round neckline.
There aren’t that many examples of this top sewn up by plus-size sewists yet, so here’s a brown one that I made! N.B I’m a knit newbie and I struggled with the neckline on this but you will probably be fine.
Do you think there’s a pattern company that I might not know about? Or a pattern that I might love? Please comment below or get in touch via instagram!
The lovely Trin from A+R Fabrics sent me this gorgeous brick coloured silk noil which recently arrived in her store. The colour is even more gorgeous in real life- part rust, part rich pumpkin colour and, just like my recent forays in to silk noil, this was a delight to sew.
I chose to whip up a Torrens Box Top with Leila and I released under the auspice of Muna and Broad (the box top and the website were released last week)! The silk noil is part drapey but still keeps a great structure, which helps the top to maintain its great architectural sleeve shape even when my arms are down (see below)!
The ingenious instructions for this super-tidy facing is clockwise from top left:
1. With non-sticky and right side of your fashion fabric facing, sew a small edge along the bottom hem of facing/interfacing 2. Clip into the curve, being careful not to stitch into your line of stitching. I also trimmed down a lot of the interfacing to reduce bulk 3. Flip your interfacing over so that the sticky-side is now touching the wrong-side of your fashion fabric (I pushed the hem with my fingers to ensure it had turned out
4. Check that none of your interfacing is visible from the right-side of your fashion fabric, adjust as necessary. 5. With interfacing side down, use your iron to adhere interfacing to fashion fabric 6. You can attach the label at this stage or simply sew your facings at the shoulder seams and continue on
Once you’ve used this method a few times it becomes quite fast, and I find it to be immensely preferable to zig-zag finshing the bottom hem!
If you’re interested in my top, the Torrens Box Top is available from a 50″ bust (I’m a 47″ bust but I love the extra ease) and is 15% off for 2 more days! The Torrens was drafted specifically with larger bodies in mind, and Leila’s drafting was really thoughtful- the top doesn’t slip back and pull at my neck, I don’t have to ‘re-adjust’ where the shoulder sits all day, and once I wrapped my head around the sleeve insertion, this is a super-quick sew!
I’d been thinking about buying some of this Australian floral printed fabric of Ellie Whittaker‘s from Spotlight’s upholstery fabric section to make this free wrap skirt from Peppermint Magazine for ages! When Spotlight had a sale, I didn’t hesitate to snap it up. But then it sat in my stash for a while and then I cut it out but didn’t sew it up, and then when I eventually sewed it up I realised that it didn’t really work with a single top that I own, so it languished in my wardrobe until today (a couple of days after this cropped white t-shirt arrived in the post)!
Size details: I’m a bit larger than the 54″ hip size for this pattern, but I cut the pasdttern as-is and used a slightly smaller seam allowance. The sizing difference means that the side-seams aren’t ‘true’ down the sides, but the generous overlap on the skirt means that it’s still difficult for me to flash the public (though not as difficult as it is in my wool version, which was utterly unaffected by breeze)! The only change I made to the pattern was lengthening the ties slightly.
Fabric estimate: I ordered 2.5 metres of this 150cm wide fabric and have a very decent amount leftover, but I did cut the pieces out paying absolutely no attention to pattern placement.
