Having made the Emanuel Ungaro top from Vogue 1543 from a lovely soft Indian cotton, I immediately wanted another one, this time at the proper length and with the armholes dropped a little.

To refresh your memory, here is the pattern envelope. it’s a pattern from the 1990s, so still a bit oversized as per the ’80s, but quite acceptable.

I used some fabric which I had bought in India in 2015. It’s a lovely block printed cotton and is sold in a clever roll as below. It was so hard to choose just one, so in the end I think I closed my eyes and just picked one, which happened to be the hot pink and turquoise you can see here.

The top is tunic length with rouleau loops and buttons down a front placket. I made the first one without incident, but when I did this one I decided I had the loops on the wrong side – having sewn the entire placket. I unpicked that side, including binding which I had trimmed, resewed the loops and then realised that I had them right the first time, they are kind of counter intuitive, where the loops are actually on the wrong side and then folded to the front and stitched. I need to say that the whole thing went downhill from there! I even went away for a few days hoping that the fairies would sort it out, but they didn’t. Sigh.

I seemed to get into a cycle of sewing/unpicking/resewing and got to the point where I was happy-ish with the placket, tried it on and then didn’t like the neckline. It seemed a bit asymmetrical or something. The photo on the left shows the neckline I was unhappy with and the one on the right is after I had fiddled with it and it sits flatter on the left hand side now.

I dropped the armhole by a centimetre but now that I look at these photos I wonder if it should be a little more? It’s very comfortable to wear, so I shall see how I feel when I’ve worn it a few times.

I didn’t want to use my overlocker on this fabric for some reason, so I used French seams throughout. I was going to add in-seam pockets but decided against it as this is quite a fine cotton and I thought the weight of pockets might distort the shape.

When I unfurled the fabric it had a crinkle cotton effect, which I had to iron out before I sewed. Now I’m trying to get the crinkles back!

I had a good look in my button stash and considered covering some buttons which I thought would look nice, but then found a few non-matching vintage blue glass buttons which I love.

I have stray threads everywhere due to all that unpicking, but I’ll get round to cutting them off in the fullness of time. Maybe!

It looks ok now and I’m reasonably happy with the neck after several bouts of unpicking and resewing. Can you see my hand looking for a pocket? I might have to add one I think.

I wore it to the local shops to meet a friend for coffee and felt very comfortable in it, although I will definitely drop the armscyes on the next one as I look at that wrinkle across the top of my bust.

finally, a little moment in Miss G’s life; she does love to read and I love that she’s properly engaged with books.