The lovely Trin from A+R Fabrics sent me this gorgeous brick coloured silk noil which recently arrived in her store. The colour is even more gorgeous in real life- part rust, part rich pumpkin colour and, just like my recent forays in to silk noil, this was a delight to sew.
I chose to whip up a Torrens Box Top with Leila and I released under the auspice of Muna and Broad (the box top and the website were released last week)! The silk noil is part drapey but still keeps a great structure, which helps the top to maintain its great architectural sleeve shape even when my arms are down (see below)!
I also used the opportunity to couple one of my new stitch-collective labels with the new tidy-facing technique I learnt from the Love To Sew podcast!
The ingenious instructions for this super-tidy facing is clockwise from top left:
1. With non-sticky and right side of your fashion fabric facing, sew a small edge along the bottom hem of facing/interfacing
2. Clip into the curve, being careful not to stitch into your line of stitching. I also trimmed down a lot of the interfacing to reduce bulk
3. Flip your interfacing over so that the sticky-side is now touching the wrong-side of your fashion fabric (I pushed the hem with my fingers to ensure it had turned out
4. Check that none of your interfacing is visible from the right-side of your fashion fabric, adjust as necessary.
5. With interfacing side down, use your iron to adhere interfacing to fashion fabric
6. You can attach the label at this stage or simply sew your facings at the shoulder seams and continue on
Once you’ve used this method a few times it becomes quite fast, and I find it to be immensely preferable to zig-zag finshing the bottom hem!
If you’re interested in my top, the Torrens Box Top is available from a 50″ bust (I’m a 47″ bust but I love the extra ease) and is 15% off for 2 more days! The Torrens was drafted specifically with larger bodies in mind, and Leila’s drafting was really thoughtful- the top doesn’t slip back and pull at my neck, I don’t have to ‘re-adjust’ where the shoulder sits all day, and once I wrapped my head around the sleeve insertion, this is a super-quick sew!
