Patterned Dressy Top

Once again, I find myself adding another piece to my Summer Wardrobe Capsule that I hadn't planned on sewing. But this piece was so easy, it almost doesn't count!

When I was in New Orleans in May, I stopped by Promenade Fabrics. Their website doesn't do them justice because it is fabric nirvana!! I spent over a glorious hour perusing their small store, and I could have spent thousands. In the end, I went home with four pieces of fabric that I had to have. 

Today I was fixing my white denim skirt and I saw one of the pieces of fabric staring at me and I knew I really wanted to sew it up. The colors in this piece go beautifully with my capsule collection, but the fabric itself is a little tricky. A two-way stretch fabric, I needed a pattern that wasn't fussy to take away from the beautiful fabric. Enter the Love Notions, La Bella Donna!

Now full disclosure - when I first saw the line drawings for this pattern, I wasn't excited about this one.  This particular pattern seems SO plain. But when I did a search on Instagram, I saw that other people have more vision than me and there were some lovely makes of this pattern. So when it was on sale on one of the $5 Feature Fridays, I bought it. And I've made one previously in a cute black and white knit, so I already knew how the pattern fit. Bonus, it was also already cut out and ready to use!

I think it took me all of an hour to sew this up once it was cut out?  I opted to do binding for the neckline, which I hadn't tried before, but I really liked it. I also decided to add the cuff to the short sleeve because this is supposed to be a dressy top. Overall, I'm really happy with the final results! 

You can't see the curved hemline, but it's really lovey. Based on the selvage, the pattern is supposed to go horizontally, but that didn't make sense to me, so I didn't use it that way.  That did make the neckline a little snugger than I would usually like, but I can still get it over my head easily, and I'm very happy with the top. This also looks super cute paired down with my white denim skirt. I need to get that photographed and reviewed soon!