Elastic Neck Top Two: MOAR Ruffles

After making my Elastic Neck Top I knew I wanted to make another one less constrained by the amount of available fabric.

I had a big cut of white cotton voile, I bought some more swimsuit elastic, and I also had a spool of n°100 sewing cotton, but then I postponed the project for a while I was working on other things.

Then FOSDEM 2024 arrived, I was going to remote it, and I was working on my Augusta Stays, but I knew that in the middle of FOSDEM I risked getting to the stage where I needed to leave the computer to try the stays on: not something really compatible with the frenetic pace of a FOSDEM weekend, even one spent at home.

I needed a backup project¹, and this was perfect: I already had everything I needed, the pattern and instructions were already on my site (so I didn’t need to take pictures while working), and it was mostly a lot of straight seams, perfect while watching conference videos.

So, on the Friday before FOSDEM I cut all of the pieces, then spent three quarters of FOSDEM on the stays, and when I reached the point where I needed to stop for a fit test I started on the top.

Like the first one, everything was sewn by hand, and one week after I had started everything was assembled, except for the casings for the elastic at the neck and cuffs, which required about 10 km of sewing, and even if it was just a running stitch it made me want to reconsider my lifestyle choices a few times: there was really no reason for me not to do just those seams by machine in a few minutes.

Instead I kept sewing by hand whenever I had time for it, and on the next weekend it was ready. We had a rare day of sun during the weekend, so I wore my thermal underwear, some other layer, a scarf around my neck, and went outside with my SO to have a batch of pictures taken (those in the jeans posts, and others for a post I haven’t written yet. Have I mentioned I have a backlog?).

And then the top went into the wardrobe, and it will come out again when the weather will be a bit warmer. Or maybe it will be used under the Augusta Stays, since I don’t have a 1700 chemise yet, but that requires actually finishing them.

The pattern for this project was already online, of course, but I’ve added a picture of the casing to the relevant section, and everything is as usual #FreeSoftWear.