Sewing : Viki Sews Deborah Top

Binge-watched sewing videos during the quarantine had made me discovered Viki Sews. I was amazed with the collection of patterns that she made, it’s right on my alley. 

Let me start with saying that I’d made the biggest mistake from the beginning of this project. My printed A4 PDF pattern wasn’t scale to 100% like it was supposed to, I’m not sure if it have to do with printing from my phone or my printer is faulty. Thinking that I have chosen the biggest size (L size) and a little scale error won’t do much harm to it. Well I got lucky this time. 

After I made my toile, I figured that I had the usual alteration problem like straight shoulder adjustment, shorten the blouse, size down the bodice and center back fits.

Working with a foreign pattern is hard, it’s in Russian. Luckily Crafterpreneur made a sewing tutorials for this top, so I didn’t have to read the Russian sewing instructions. I also made the facing 2 inches wider, just like she suggested. Thank you so much!!

The crisp slightly thicker cotton is the perfect fabric for this top. Even though I was a little hesitant on sewing with plain fabric (there’s no busy prints to hide all your sewing mistakes), but I take this as a challenge instead.

The back zipper is one of my favourite, it starts from the bottom and end just a few inches lower than the neckline - the wide neckline made it possible for such design. Plus the zipper end point seems like the maximum height for my hand to reach for the back zipper. Clever design.

The sleeve is amazing too, even though I made the mistakes of using the wrong side of the sleeve pattern (the pleated parts supposedly be the right side), but in the end it still creates the same puffy sleeve, so no big deal. I did shorten the sleeve length by 2 inches.

I’m glad I didn’t gave up on this project, despite all the mistakes that I made early on. It turned out to be my happy little accident and I love it. I think I should make the dress version, oh gosh it’s cute!