I used to do a lot of dress making for myself, then quilting took over and I haven’t done anything for years. With my recent interest in fabric design for digital printing I was inspired to get my patterns out and make something again with this cotton knit material that started life as an ice dyed fabric.
I photographed the finished fabric and then manipulated it in Photoshop so that I had a mirrored image that I could use for a repeat pattern. I then had this digitally printed by Spoonflower on an organic cotton knit. I haven’t done much sewing with knits so I chose a simple pattern, but I still had to adapt it so that I could the arms and neckline using a knit binding instead of a traditional bias binding that the pattern called for. I was able to watch a class on Craftsy to help with this: “Sewing fashion knits” by Linda Lee.
I got out my old Janome overlocker which again I haven’t used for years and was delighted to find that it worked perfectly.
I made bound armholes and neckline following the directions in Linda’s class and found these gave a really nice finish. The soft colours of the print look great with jeans, although I think it’s look great with something white too. Now I’ve done this I am keen to experiment with more of my iced dyed fabrics and maybe even some of my hand dyes too. If anyone wants to make their own version of this top or anything else for that matter the fabric design is available in my Spoonflower shop in a wide range of different fabrics http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/anne_renata
