Pintucks, voile, et a whole lotta flowers

There was a time in the late 80s when I owned a LOT of floral clothing. I had a navy floral mini-skirt, a beige floral jumper (remember those?!), and a Liberty-type button-down floral shirt that I bought in France with my bourgeois host mother's approval. 

Now it's been awhile and I found myself gazing longingly at the floral-patterned view of Simplicity 2365. The sewists of Pattern Review rather liked this one, and it seemed promising to me for two reasons: pintucks in the front (modern! on trend!) and roll-up sleeves with tabs (practical! yet something new to sew!).

After my big birthday, I decided to treat myself to some delicious fabric. This here is Budquette in Nightfall voile from the Emmy Grace collection by Bari J Ackerman for Art Gallery Fabric. What a mouthful! Let's just call it yummy voile for short. The fabric is amazing - super-soft, completely forgiving to sew with with, intricately patterned. Enough to make a girl who hasn't worn florals in a long, long time stop and think...why not?

About the pintucks. If you've never sewn them before, you should! But you must practice first. I was so much better the second time that I had to go back and rip out all five pintucks from the first time...which I was only able to bring myself to do at the very end, when it was twice as hard. Here's what I learned: don't attempt to mark the full pintuck lines on the fabric because it's $%#@ impossible. You're better off making a little snip at the top where the line begins, and a chalk mark at the end. Then, if you're using a thin fabric like this one, you can just fold the fabric in place and sew. But here's where I messed up. You need to sew seriously near the fold - as close as you can get without going over the edge. I used the inside hole of my presser foot as the guide, keeping the edge of the fold at the other end of the view hole while I sewed. If you make your pintucks too deep as I did at first, you get a terrible pooch at the bottom by your tummy. Don't do it! Though I regret not having photographed my botched job for your amusement.

This top fits great in a size 6 (I'm back to making the smallest size I see after my last mishap), although the voile is a bit lightweight which discourages its flowing seamlessly over the bum.