Finished Project: HotPatterns 1191 - Fast & Fabulous Trilogy Top, Tunic, and Dress

*sigh*  This is not my best finished project. This top is a lesson in why you should always make a muslin:

My top is not unwearable. In fact, it's comfortable as heck, but I blew the FBA on this one (yes, you read that right--*I* blew an FBA on something. It happens.) It just has some awkwardness that makes me a bit self-conscious to wear it outside of running around on a weekend.

The pattern is the HotPatterns Fast & Fabulous Trilogy Top. My issues with this top have nothing to do with the pattern and everything to do with me approaching this quick pattern with a sense of overconfidence and getting burned by that. (For me, this seems to happen far more often with projects that should be quick, instant gratification sews.)

HotPatterns - Trilogy top

And yeah, I'm aware that the sun was distractingly bright and that there are obnoxious shadows in these photos. I took these at 7am one morning during one of our recent heatwaves, and the sun was already eye-searingly bright at that hour. Given that I'm starting to get a backup of unblogged projects, I didn't want to hold up this post any longer to re-take photos of a top that I'm not crazy about.

 

How I messed up

 

Before I go into my actual review of the pattern, let's talk about how I messed this one up. My pattern alterations and design changes on this one were like following a Choose Your Own Adventure story where every choice you make is wrong, sending you deeper and deeper into the cave of doom, to where you finally meet your end at the hands of some many tentacled beast, and have to go all the way back to some choice that you made on page 6 to correct the thing.

1. By not making a muslin, I completely erred on where the bust point of the pattern was. I took a look at the armscye of the pattern piece, guessed that the bust point should be somewhere a little below that, and plotted my FBA lines accordingly. In reality, I needed the bust point to be quite a bit higher than this, and so the fullness that I added for my FBA ended up getting added too far down the bodice to be of much help for me. I had to add a gusset at the side seams to make this top wearable in the bust.
2. I decided that I didn't want a bust dart on this top; there isn't one in the original design, and I've also had iffy experiences with wearing bust darts on loose-fitting tops. I hate going to the bathroom at work, looking in the mirror, and wondering how the heck my bust dart wandered all the way over to wherever it's currently sitting.
3. If I needed an FBA (which I did) but didn't want a bust dart, I needed to rotate that dart somewhere. To me, the obvious position for dart rotation was the deep pleat at the shoulder that's both there for design and shaping. However, when I rotated my dart there, the already large deep pleat became HUGE. I panicked and decided to gather the pleat instead. Unfortunately, I didn't place the gathers well (I went off the pleat markings) and my double gauze, which handled the gathering so well in my recent peasant blouse, was too thick for the excessive amount of gathering that I introduced.

All of these mis-steps contributed to the awkward garment that you see pictured. I cursed myself a bit over my misuse of my somewhat pricey double gauze for this one. At least I've got a super comfortable top to wear around the house or maybe as a pajama top now, though, right?

Anyway, on to reviewing the actual pattern...

HotPatterns - Trilogy top

No, my version does not look like the pattern envelope. Nor does it look much like the vision in my head (where I'd already swapped out the deep pleat for shirring):

Trilogy Top sketch

Fabric and Notions Used

 

I used the following fabric and notions for this project:

• Kobayashi double gauze fabric (cotton) in "plum" purchased in person at local shop Drygoods Designs.

This pattern required no notions, including interfacing or closures.

Pattern Sizing and Alterations

 

This pattern is available in HotPatterns sizes 6-26 (32"-52" bust).


This particular pattern isn't as loose an boxy and you might think from the line drawing. I started with a size 18 for my neck and shoulders (my typical HotPatterns starting size). By doing a flat pattern measurement/comparison, I determined that I'd need a 2" FBA on this top. I rotated the dart into the shoulder pleat and converted the pleat to gathers (bad choice, BTW).

To make up for setting the bust point too low (and therefore losing out on the ease that I needed at the fullest point of my bust), I added a gusset at the top underarm.

Finally, I doubled the yoke so that it was self-faced. Why? Because it just feels weird to have a single-layer shoulder yoke.

HotPatterns Trilogy Top - back

Pattern Instructions

 

HotPatterns don't have super detailed instructions, but this is a pretty easy pattern. The cap sleeves and neckline are all finished with a self bias binding, so that was a nice touch to have instead of using a facing.

 

Final Thoughts

 

Meh. Obviously, I'm not thrilled with this one. I don't feel like it's the pattern's fault, though. A fair number of people in the HotPatterns Facebook group have made this up, and it's looked really nice on everyone; however, they were not overcome by a Cascade of Bad Decisions when they made up their versions.

I might tackle this pattern again some day (fixing the errors, of course), but for now, I'm putting it aside and starting on a different project.