June’s Meadow Ryan Top

Hello! How are you? We had our first partial week of school last week and right off the bat my oldest son, Luke, came home with an ear infection. He wasn’t up to doing much on Saturday afternoon and my younger son, Andrew went off for an adventure with my husband’s parents. When Caroline went down for her nap I decided to clean up my sewing mess on the dining room table. Cleaning turned into cutting fabric that was hanging out on the table and then I got started sewing. She slept for an amazing 4 hours and I ended up with a new Ryan top!

I made this top once before and I’ve worn it many times. I mentioned at the end of my post about that first top that I wanted to make another one and it might be a great candidate for my first time sewing with silk. I haven’t been brave enough to purchase any silk yet, but I did come across a really great sale on Liberty lawn at Westwood Acres fabric shop. At 50% off I really couldn’t pass up some of this floral print called June’s Meadow.

The pattern only calls for 1.25 yards of fabric in the 54″ width, so this was pretty inexpensive at the 50% off price! I have almost nothing red in my wardrobe and recently I’ve been wanting to change that. This fabric is sort of an orangey red in person, which kind of surprised me. I expected more of a true red, but I love it anyway.

I made this the same size as my first one– medium graded to a large, shortened by 2″ at the hem and hemmed with 1/2″ deeper hem. I used the neck facing this time instead of bias tape, since there wasn’t any embroidery to get in the way of the topstitching. I also increased the seam allowance at the bottom of the yoke to be 1/2″ instead of 1/4″. I found it much easier to manage the gathers with the extra seam allowance.

I was kicking myself that I didn’t think to increase the seam allowance at the shoulder seams to be 1/2″ so I could have done french seams. I feel like a lovely fabric like this tana lawn deserves fancy french seams, but there is no way to do them with only a 1/4″ seam allowance. So the inside is finished with my serger but no one is ever going to see that (or care about it) but me.

I really love this sweet, simple pattern. It’s really comfortable and I think it’s a great showcase for a special fabric that you might not want to keep for only special occasions. I still want to make one in silk and now I’m dreaming about one in a fabulous Nani Iro double gauze.  I can definitely see myself wearing this top layered with a cardigan in the cooler months and I know it’s going to get lots of wear during the last few weeks of Summer.

~Teri

 

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