Paco Peralta is a Spanish couturier who has recently started making some of his designs available to buy as patterns. Late last year I purchased his “Draped Collar Tunic” pattern when he was having a special offer, and I’m so glad I found time to sew it already!
It’s an oversized, hip-length tunic with dropped shoulder and large, draping collar. All his patterns are hand-traced by him, with Spanish and English markings on the pattern tissue, but no included instructions – he’s got good photo instructions for this pattern on his blog though. I made size Medium here according to my measurements, though I could’ve easily gone done to a Small, as there’s a lot of ease in this style.
Bonus – All Paco’s patterns are 10% off right now with the coupon code here!
(Sorry, there’s no tech drawing provided and I’m too lazy to draw one!)
I had a 80% wool / 20% polyester purple sweater knit I bought at Ditto in Brighton last winter that was SO lush and soft and I just had to use it for this! Funny that Tany also chose to make this in a sweater knit, though she lengthened hers into a dress!
Could this be the most perfect, comfy winter loungewear? As it turns out, I caught the flu last week (well, it was still a “cold” when I took these photos), so I’m in need of warm slouchies right now! Apologies for not answering as many comments as I’d like while I recover…
But alas, the 2m of sweater knit I had bought was nowhere near enough fabric for this pattern! I was too pig-headed not to use it, so I introduced a back seam, and also had to seam the sleeves in order to “make it work”. In hindsight I could’ve lopped some length off the body instead, and probably would’ve only had to piece the sleeves once. But my main objective was to not mess with the collar piece at all, and for that, I feel I made the right decision.
The main attraction of this pattern is the big, floppy collar. The pattern piece is deceptively simple-looking but is actually beautifully drafted with lots of nice curves that make it fall beautifully:
Here you can see the dropped sleeve seam, plus my two additional seams further down towards the wrist:
This pattern is for wovens or knits – the only difference is that the collar is cut on the bias in non-stretch fabrics. Since my knit is very stretchy and quite thick, I must say that I didn’t do a very good job stabilising or getting the differential feed 100% correct here – I can see lots of waviness in these photos that wasn’t apparent in real life.
So I thought I’d distract you with photos of our big, lumbering famous neighbour!
Next up: Photos of my Clover jeans (which you can partly see in these photos), which were also sewn before New Year’s…