Finished Project: Peplum Top Knock-Off

Spring's here! (well, on paper anyway). I've been holding on to this post for a while because it felt so out of season until now. Truth is, this top has been finished since last fall, but I didn't take photos of it until a couple months ago, and I had more winter-ish projects I wanted to blog about first.

I fell in love with this Tibi top when I first saw it on the Glamourai's blog. I decided in the back of my mind that I would knock it off somehow. When I found the flowery cotton fabric at Dressew, I thought about the top right away and decided to go for it.

The original Tibi top has black trim going down the front and back, from neckline to waist. It doesn't seem to have any visible bust shaping, so I assumed the trim was covering all the shaping.

Rather than trying to rotate darts on a simple bodice block (which might have been easier, but who knows), I went on the search for a top pattern that would already have shaping at the neckline. Eventually, I landed on Burda pattern 121, from August 2012. It included darts at the waist, and pleats at the neckline, both of which could be turned into one princess-type seam. 

I did quite a bit of pattern hacking with this:

-Attached the shoulder yokes to the main bodice.

-turned the neckline pleats into darts

-rotated new neckline dart and waist dart slightly, so they would align more

-split front bodice in half lengthwise by turning darts into a princess type seam

I also made my usual set of adjustments:

-lengthenned bodice 2.5 cm

-added shoulder dart to avoid armhole gaping

-forward shoulder adjustement

-added an additional 1.5 cm to back harmole, this I think due to the style of the pattern and how far in the sleeves seemed to attach.

I didn't add any "princess" seam to the back, instead I just added the trim on top of the dart and continued it to the neckline.

 

After the first muslin, I noticed some gaping in the front armhole, and extra fabric accross the bust. I just pinned the excess and it seemed to work. I slashed the pattern from armhole to apex at an angle and overlapped the top and bottom about 2cm. On the center panel, I overlapped the same amount parallel to the hemline. I basically made a variation of a small bust adjustment to a princess seam, but reducing the armhole size at the same time.

That's quite a bit of pattern tweaking, but I don't remember it being that tedious, in the end I think muslin #2 was good, and I was able to go on to the fashion fabric pretty soon after.

But first I had to figure out the peplum portion. Looking closely at the original, I noticed that the peplum was pleated, with the folds lining up with the front and back trim, as well as the side seams. After a couple of tries, I finally figured that I needed a half-circle shape so it would have the right amount of volume (but not too much).

I started by measuring my waist (71cm)

From there, I determined that I wanted to add 6 pleats of 5 cm each once folded, so 10 cm unfolded, so 60cm of additional length. Total =131 cm at the waist.

I then used this fancy calculator to figure out the radius and other dimensions I needed.

I obviously didn't have any markings so putting the pleats together properly took a bit of fiddling, but in the end I managed to get what I wanted, with everything lining up nicely

The bodice and the peplum are both lined with cotton broadcloth. The lining of the peplum part was first sewed to the main fabric at the hem, then folded under and attached to the bottom of the bodice (main fabric & lining) with top stitching. the black trim around the waist covers the top stitching.

 

I'm really hapy with how this turned out. The fabric isn't as graphic as the original top, but it still looks pretty colorful. When I first cut the fabric, I spent some time trying to figure out how to line things up. I ended up lining the pattern somewhat in the back. In the front, I wasn't happy with the flower placement on one of the side panels, so I decided to forget about lining up the flower pattern (the trim creates a break anyway), so I recut that panel to get better flower placement.

If I'm completely honnest, this is definitely an "icing" piece. I don't wear a lot of sleeveless tops at work, because of AC and also I don't love showing my skinny shoulders and upper arm at work anyways. So I don't know how often I'll be wearing this, but regardless, I'm glad I made it, it was a very interesting pattern-experimentation type of project, and I'm quite proud of the finished garment...I might even leave it out on display on a hanger somewhere, I'd be fine with that.

I've finished quite a few projects lately, but haven't been able to take photos. In the meantime I've been trying to switch my sewing queue from winter to spring. I bought two more issues of Burda (because I needed more to pile up :P ), and I've already set my eyes on this particular dress, and maybe the cute summer raincoat from the "easy-2015" issue.