Butterick 6215 Tunic - Beating the heat!

Good morning, friends. What a hot summer! I'm so spoiled. Living between the ocean and the Everglades, I almost always have a nice breeze that is cooled by having passed over water. Humid, yes, but seldom above 90 degrees. But June has been hot! Time to pull out all stops and find something cool to wear...that's also age appropriate and doesn't scare off the lizards.

Butterick 6215 is a very new pattern, I haven't seen it reviewed at all. Well, it's an old pattern number that's been re-cycled. It's cute! and definitely loose and cool.

I'm kind of attracted to hi-low hems this summer, don't know why. In the past I've redrafted them to be even. Now I really like them. View A, the one worn by the model, grabbed my attention right away. How nice are those cap sleeves. Bonus - the pattern also has sleeves. 

Here's my first version, View A:

Unfortunately, cute as they are, the cap sleeves won't work for me right now. And I want to wear this right now! But I wanted to show these pics because View A is so pretty. 

Next, I tried using the sleeves from View B, thinking to do them at elbow length. They were easy to attach, as they are basically a tube. But they're not at all comfortable. I could hardly raise my arms. No pic of this little disaster.

On to plan C. I pulled out my Scout Tee pattern, that I redrafted in March, and used it to alter this top. I just put the top on the floor, all flattened out, and cut armscyes using the Scout pieces. And then I used the Scout sleeves as well. Just right. 

A few more sewing notes:

• My fabric is from the Robert Kaufman London Calling 4 Lawn collection. So smooth and light. I grabbed this print, and one more, from a Hancocks of Paducah online sale, at $3.99/yard. wow. I'm going to keep looking on their site all summer for more from this collection.

• I used size Medium (12-14) and really like the fit. 

• I lowered the front to ensure it would go past the crotch/leg join. To do this, I just brought the CF line down 1 3/4" and redrew the curve to each side. Since the front is cut on the fold, the change was easy to do. 

• Something new for me: I used my serger to do the ruffle! I don't know why I haven't done this before. But with about 3 yards of fabric to be gathered and sewn on, I was really looking for an easy out. It was a piece of cake! I had the ruffle done and attached in about 5 minutes.

• And I just turned up the serged hem about 3/8", to finish it off. Easy peasy.

• Interestingly, the pattern instructions suggest French seams and give instructions on doing them. Which I ignored and just serged/cut my seam allowances together at 3/8". 

• One last note: the pattern has facings for the front and back necklines. Love love. No V-neck binding woes on this one. I topstitched the front neckline about 1/4" from the edge, and topstitched the back along the edge of the facing. So no fly-away facings...

On to other sewing stuff excitement - I got an SA (seam allowance) Curve from Clair Cochran's Etsy shop. It comes in 3/8", 1/2" (my choice), and 5/8" versions. How nice is this, for drawing seam allowances on down-loaded patterns that need them. BurdaStyle, Marfy, lots of Indie patterns...

It feels so good to be sewing again with a light heart. 

Ciao! Coco