This feels a bit strange to post the leftover make before the intentional one, but I want to keep the other garment’s post together with the rest of the outfit over the next week or two… so you get the “scrap” camisole first!
I had less than a half metre of custom fabric leftover from the Lestat lawyer scene blouse I designed and printed up especially for it, so it seemed a waste to just let it marinade in my stash. I figured I could make a little camisole from it, even though there wasn’t much left. I thought that surely I must have a simple little woven cami pattern in my pattern stash somewhere, but nothing came up in my pdf patterns, so I started looking through my books…
…and I found the perfect pattern inside the Great British Sewing Bee “Fashion With Fabric” book! I actually worked on this book ten(!!) years ago, and sewed a lot of the “perfects” seen in the book, but the Camisole Top Hack (of the jumpsuit pattern) wasn’t one of them.
The camisole is pictured with an inner facing AND a ruffle, but you know my thoughts on ruffles, and besides, I wouldn’t have had enough fabric for it anyway.
As it was, I could really only fit it into my leftover fabric by introducing a Centre Back seam and cutting the facing from a portion of the fabric where Maake had messed up the printing (skewed and desaturated), then restarted the full yardage. But they gave me the messed up portion as a free extra, so it came in handy here. It’s printed onto Maake’s “Eco Satin Flow” base fabric, which feels really lush against the skin, and with only a subtle sheen rather than being overtly shiny like some of the other samples I tested.
I made a size 18 (second to largest) based on my Bust, but it’s a little tight in the hips so I probably should’ve graded out to a 20 for the bottom edge.
As with the blouse, I used my overlocker for the main seams and a Microtex Sharp needle on my sewing machine for the rest.
The instructions have you apply vilene bias tape along the seam line of the exterior, but not interface the facings. It’s a bit odd, but works here as you want the facings to remain lightweight and near invisible (the same reason I opted to keep the bottom facing edge pinked instead of overlocked, which might show a ridge when worn).
As it turned out, having the extra CB seam was a bonus as it meant I had a third place to stitch in the ditch to tack down the facings. This fabric didn’t take a press very well so they really wanted to fly out!
The instructions said to sew the straps with a 1cm (3/8in) seam allowance but this looked to make them too wide and frumpy imho so I sewed them with 1.5cm (5/8in) instead which got them narrow enough for me. Though if I’d have had fabric space to cut them on the bias I would’ve made them even thinner!
In my (admittedly biased) opinion, this is the best of the Sewing Bee books, and flipping through it again I was struck by how many of the patterns are still very fashionable ten years later! Definitely worth buying if you don’t have it already.