Stripey Lark Tee

Hello all! The lovely Lucy at Sew Essential contacted me to offer me some fabric to try out, and I said yes please! I picked the St Tropez jersey in fuchsia and white stripes for the perfect basic tee. Basic, but a fun and warm tee that will be worn all the time.

I thought the Lark tee by Grainline would be the perfect pattern to pair it with, and it was. This is the second Grainline pattern I've used (the other being the Archer) and the first time I've used one in a paper format. It only took an hour to cut out all the pattern pieces from the tissue, fold them down to my size and cut out the fabric, doing as much stripe matching as possible. I appreciated the fact that there were separate pattern pieces for each neckline option, which makes the lines much clearer to see.

Because I put the effort into matching the stripes when cutting out, sewing it up was fairly simple and again only took about an hour. I'm so pleased with how well the sleeves match.

In terms of fitting issues, there are a few. The top is perfectly wearable, but there are definitely alterations to be made before I make it again. You can see below that there's some bunching at the back of the sleeve. Hopefully that can be sorted out by just pinching out some of the pattern piece.

As you can see, I'm pretty pleased with the stripe matching down the side seam, but there is some excess at the bust, which is to be expected because mine is an inch or so smaller than the smallest size of the pattern. I'm not really sure how I'm going to fix this. I could just bring in the top of the side seam a bit, or I could do a small bust adjustment.

Looking at the back I'm thinking that I perhaps have a bit of a swayback issue, which could be resolved by pinching out all of the excess on the pattern piece. The neckband is alright, but I wish I'd matched the stripe at the back!

I sewed it all up on my overlocker while I was home for the weekend, the hems are bondawebbed up, ready to be sewn in place. My overlocker is having issues at the moment. I spent a fair bit getting it fixed in the summer, and as soon as I got it back it wasn't right again, and so all the stitches on this are pulling apart, which is why there are white outlines on all of the seams. I mean, it's holding together but it's not ideal. Sew Essential have a big sale on at the moment and I'm eyeing up this one and this one. Do you have any recommendations?

Fit issues aside, I am very happy with this top. It's one of those items of clothing that you forget you are wearing, it's just that comfy to wear. Now I just need to find a big chunky cardigan to wear over the top, because it's getting chilly now.

Thanks very much for reading, to Sew Essential for the fabric and pattern and to Edward for taking the pictures!
Lauren xx