Tessuti Fave Top – The Ombre One

Great sewing friends will give you the shirt off their back… so you can test the fit, of course! I had seen the Tessuti Fave Top on other blogs before, but passed it over because I generally shy away from anything that is “one size fits most”. That is, until Jill wore her version to a Denver Sewing Collective meetup and let me try it on. I’m kind of amazed that the exact same top looked good on the both of us, so I decided to sew up my own version.

The fabric is an ombre knit from fabric.com (now sold out). I had assumed when ordering it that the ombre print was from selvedge to selvedge considering it was being sold by the yard, but NOPE it was a panel print with a hard line between the black and white at the repeat. Leave it to fabric.com to sell a panel print by the yard! I had ordered 2.5 yard so luckily I ended up with 2 full panels plus some waste on either end. I set it aside a few months ago waiting for the right pattern to come along, and this two piece pattern was perfect. Here’s a closeup of the print within the ombre effect:

The pattern instructions call for serging the seams. Sometimes I’ll just use a straight stitch on an over-sized knit garment, but with this top the body is loose but the sleeves are tight, so serging or zig zagging the side seams is probably best. This is a great pattern for someone just beginning with a serger to try out because there are only a couple seams. I liked the way the instructions called for turning over and stitching the neckline BEFORE sewing the shoulder seams together. This makes it really easy for a beginner to get a nice flat neckline, as opposed to worrying about stretching the neckline out when you do it in the opposite order.

Initially I had widened and lengthened the sleeves on the pattern, but after trying on Lynne’s version I decided I liked it as is and chopped it down to the original size. If I made it up again I would probably shorten it a bit, but I didn’t want to ruin the proportions of the colors on this version.

Speaking of Lynne’s version, she was ready to call it a wadder, so I took it off her hands…