PR One Yard Challenge – Colette Sorbetto

I’ve been seeing a lot of very nice Colette Sorbettos, for ages, and only recently decided to hop on the band wagon. And I have to say, I’m glad I did, as it’s a great little top!

Last month I printed out the pattern intending to make some before the warm weather hits, and then I saw that PR is doing a contest for projects using no more than one yard of fabric. That did it. I got off my arse and started cutting!

Right, so to make things reeeally difficult I decided to start with this piece of purple polyester fabric (not sure, it came from the remnant bin) that was too small for anything else. I thought I’d try to squeeze a Sorbetto out of it. No kidding, there wasn’t much, a scant 30 inches in length and 44 inches wide. Needless to say I did not incorporate the front central pleat. It. Was. Tight! Notice how I had to overlap the fabric in the center? It came out all right, but I really had to measure carefully in order to fit the lower edges.

Because I didn’t have much fabric to begin with, I had to piece together the remains (in 4 rectangles) in order to get a 10x10 inch block to make the bias tape. There are quite a lot of seams in the tape! The Colette tutorial is great by the way, the one for continuous bias tape.

What I did right:

1. Got the pattern!
2. Cut a size 6 bust and graded out to a size 9 waist/hip.
3. Left off the center pleat (well, I had no choice, but it would have been nice to have)
4. Used self bias tape (that I was able to eek it out of the remains!)
5. Serged the shoulder and side edges before assembling.

After stitching the front and back together, but before finishing the edges with bias tape, I tried it on and found it a little large/open at the lower edges of the armholes. So now we get to what I did wrong needs tweaking next time!

1. I took in the shoulder seams about 5 cm. In hindsight that was too much as I hadn’t accounted for the effect of sewing on the bias tape: it really tightened up the openings.
2. I sewed the bias tape on as binding, which as it turns out is the wrong way. Instead, it should have been sewn on as a bias facing.
3. The shoulders are a little too wide for me (petite frame!) and slide off a bit.
4. It keeps sliding backwards, a problem I have with MANY things, so a forward neck tilt/rounded back alteration is in order.
5. The bust darts are a bit low, they’ll need to be raised.
6. And lastly, I didn’t mark the ends of the darts so they ended up a little long and end right ON my bust point!

There are 3 more pieces of fabric waiting to be turned into Sorbettos. So, I’ve decided to just step back and make a real muslin to get the fit right. I might as well.

And, I’m going to fix the armholes on this top as I really like the fabric/colour and it coordinates with a lovely silk/cotton I have plans for soon. Might as well do it, it can’t take *that* long!