BWOF 6-08-123

If you find yourself humming the Flashdance theme later today...I take full responsibility.


(Please ignore the blatant jazz hands.) Yup, my photo is off-center. But I took this blasted picture with my camera timer 15 times. This was the best of the lot.

Ok, the BEST of the lot was probably this one, but I cut my head off. And the whole point of me photog'ing ME was so you could see my lovely (no shower yet --it's 7 a.m.-- no hair do, no make up) face. Plus, I look like I don't have a neck in this one. On the positive side, no jazz hands.


And I tried cropping the first one so that it was just the ME face and the top, but I look all out of proportion without ankles. I'm glad I have them in real life.

Here's my shoes, since I put them on special for the "shoot" and they were cut off by my timer suckage:

Yes my friends, to complete the post-disco era fashion statement I give you disco ball flip-flops (or as I like to call them--loudly, in front of Lu, in public--THONGS.) Tar-jay, $12.99.

Oh yeah, back to the pattern. I love it. It's not something I'll be making again in several colors, obviously. But it turned out SO cute. I'm going on vacation at the end of the week and this is a perfect beach vacation top.

It's still unhemmed, because I'm not sure about the length. I played with it last night and it actually looks cute shorter, but there's something sloppy and fun about the longer length so I'll probably leave it.

I cut the 46 and the only alteration I made was to scoot the CF over about 1.5" to allow for my chest appendages. I don't think the BWOF model had any, so I figured I better make allowances.

I did run into a bit of "I have to walk away or I'm going to rip this goshforsaken magazine to shreds" trouble with the neckline. Here' the line drawing:

So, after you bind the holes over the shoulders (easy), you go to work on the neckbands. The odd part (to me) is that you do the front & back bands separately before ever attaching at shoulder seams. The other odd part is that their directions for applying the neckband facings SUCK. (ok, not odd.) Ahem.

To save you a lot of hair-pulling, I'll share what I eventually figured out (one Fool's Gold viewing and a trip to WM for Tylenol later.) You place the front neckband & facing RST and stitch the top (neck) side completely across. Then on the bottom side of the facing/neckband, you only stitch up to the edge of the shoulder-hole binding. Then you have this little bit of a "tube" to turn right sides out. That's it. There's a whole convoluted paragraph in BWOF on this, but this is actually what they meant. Repeat for the back facing/neckband.

Then you just press under the remaining seam allowances of the facings and baste, topstitch. I skipped the basting because I'm a rebel like that. (I did pin.) To join the neckbands, you stitch the neckband at the shoulder seams, and then hand-stitch the facing closed (the facing seam allowance was pressed under earlier.)

And while you'd think watching Kate Hudson cavorting about in a tiny bikini with Matthew McConaughey would diminish my desire to wear a sexy hole-shoulder top...you'd be so wrong! Look at my cute shoulders in those holes!

And those ankles. Wow.