Oso tank

I get the Sew Daily newsletter, and every now and then they do a free sew-along – I couldn’t resist this one! It’s a woven tank top, which is cropped and has princess seams, and it uses very little fabric so is perfect for scraps. I thought it would be a great summery top and I was very keen to practise sewing princess seams. Here’s how it went…

1. The fabric

I made this out of cotton fabric scraps that I had left over from making my Charlie Caftan. It’s a lovely Lady McElroy fabric which has these damselflies all over it in an abstract black, yellow and cream print. I needed to make some bias binding out of it, which worked out well because I had enough scraps to complete this top with quite a lot of bias binding left over for something else as well). Otherwise the only other thing I needed was a tiny scrap of interfacing and an invisible zip.

2. The pattern

This “Oso Tank” was released recently from Sew Daily and it comes with videos, PDF guides, plus the pattern and it’s completely free! I think they are only free for the month when they are released, but if you have signed up for it then you can access the content for longer. I had to make a few changes to the pattern to get it to fit my bust size.

I chose the pattern which according to my measurements would fit me across the bust and then I graded it to a different size at the waist. I then cut it out of swedish tracing paper and basted it together to test the fit. I found that the bust did fit but it left large gaps exposed at the sides which I wasn’t happy with. So I ended up adding quite a lot of extra to the edge of the pattern to get it to fit correctly. Otherwise the pattern seemed to fit quite well and I didn’t need to make any other adjustments (not even a narrow shoulder!).

3. The challenges

For me the biggest challenge was the princess seams. Because I don’t have an overlocker I wasn’t able to finish the edges of the fabric in the way that they suggest in the pattern and so I ended up following Zoona Nova’s excellent tutorial on how to sew princess seams with a french seam. If you’re interested, it is here: http://zoonanova.com/french-seams-on-princess-panels.

I found that I needed to gather the side panels up quite a lot in order to get the curves to fit together for the princess seams. It was quite fiddly to sew the seams without getting puckers, and I didn’t manage to do it perfectly! However, the tutorial was really helpful and I think I did a reasonable job.

The only other challenging/time consuming part was getting the straps to be the right length on me – the pattern has quite long straps and I found I needed to take almost 3 inches off in order to get this to fit me.

When I tried it on I found that there was a bit of excess fabric in the section I’d added, so I added in a small dart to take that out. Otherwise it fit well – not bad going considering it’s the first time I’ve made this.

4. The final result

I have to say, I absolutely love this top! I’m delighted that I was able to make it with such a small amount of fabric and I think the cropped length is really flattering. The pattern suggests hacking it to make the back panel out of a jersey so that you don’t need to insert the zip in the side seam, so I’m really keen to try that. I think the princess seams could still use some work to get them to sit perfectly. I think they might need to be moved outwards slightly. But all in all, I think it’s a really good fit. Considering it’s a free pattern and scrap pieces of fabric, I’m absolutely chuffed with this!