Snapdragon Studios Market Day Tunic

Last week was the Fall edition of Selfish Sewing Week.  Did anyone participate?  I have two new items to show you this week that I made during Selfish Sewing Week.  The first is the Market Day Tunic from Snapdragon Studios.  I am really excited about this top.  I first found out about Snapdragon Studios over at Indiesew.  I have had my eye on the Weekend Rambler skirt, but once I knew I was pregnant I figured it would have to wait until next Spring.  Elizabeth from Snapdragon Studios contacted me recently and asked if I’d like to be part of a blog hop she was putting together.  I was happy to see that the Market Day Tunic had worked for her while she was 30 weeks pregnant so I decided to make it.  I made a muslin before I jumped in since I hadn’t worked with one of their patterns before.  I ended up making some fitting changes based on my muslin .

I started out cutting between the lines for the size small and medium and I graded out to a large at the bottom.  I actually had a little bit more room than I wanted at the bottom so I ended up leaving the back piece graded to a large and cut the front piece down to a medium at the bottom.  I also found that I had quite a bit of extra room through the shoulders.  I took off 3/4″ from the top of the shoulders on the front and back pieces and then lowered the neckline curves by 3/4″.

I wanted the upper sleeve seams to hit at my shoulders instead of being a little bit of a drop shoulder so I scooped out the armscyes by 1/2″.  To adjust for all of these changes I took out about 1″ height from the sleeve cap so it would still fit in the armscye. To do this I drew a straight line across the sleeve cap from the front sleeve notches to the back notch marks, cut across the line, and overlapped the pieces.  (It just so happened that I had checked out Gertie’s New Book For Better Sewing from the library the day I was making my muslin and she had a section about how to make all of these adjustments.)

These changes really tailored the fit to my body, but of course I wonder if I would have just made a size small on the top if I would have been better off.  I don’t want to make anything too small now because I’m certainly not going to be getting smaller in the near future!

Once I got the fit sorted out I had a really hard time settling on fabric.  I must have ironed about 4 different fabrics before I remembered that I had this Robert Kaufman slub chambray in my stash.  I also had scraps of the fun ikat-ish print that I used for the neck facing and I thought the two fabrics were pretty perfect together.  I chose not to do a contrast fabric for the cuffs, but I think I will the next time I make this top.  I wished I would have had about half a yard more of the chambray because I think this pattern would also make a really cute dress.  I really want to try that modification.

I love that the pattern has bust darts and front and back darts to give it some shape.  It’s still a loose, swingy fit, but it’s not boxy.  The pattern calls for a size zipper, but I was able to get my muslin on and off without it so I left it out.   I think I should be able to wear this for the next few months and then I’ll be excited to see how it looks post baby.  This was a fun pattern to sew and would be a great addition to your fall sewing list!

~Teri

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