Stash Bustin' Peter Pan Collar Batwing Tops

Alrighty! Time to show you the first garments I've made with the conscious intention of accommodating a baby-bump. Out of all the plans and schemes I've come up with for the first half of my pregnancy, these are the items I'd be most likely to make if I wasn't pregnant. With so much to get my head round at the moment, it seemed to make sense to ease myself in gently into maternity sewing!

So here we have two batwing jersey tops with contrast woven Peter Pan collars from a self-drafted pattern. All the fabric used has been lurking in my stash for over six months and required bustin' outta there! In essence there are no differences between these tops and my previous leopard collar batwing top, except these are longer in length and a bit of extra width has been added from the waist down to make room for my bump. I have no idea how far into my pregnancy I'll be able to wear these, perhaps all the way through. However, they'll definitely be wearable again when I 'come out the other side', possibly requiring to be taken in again a little at the side seams if the jersey gets a bit stretched out. My aim is to sew exclusively with stash fabric for all my maternity needs as far as possible, but I only intend to use fabric I REALLY love if I KNOW it's a garment design I'd love to wear even if I wasn't pregnant and will be able to get heaps of wear from in the future. 

As I mentioned last month, I've got a total colour-crush on mustard-yellow. My recent mustard mariniere trousers creation weren't the only mustard plans I had in the pipe-line, knowing full well I had a decent length of this slinky jersey also residing dans le stash. Taking note of some of the helpful comments from my 'An Ode to Mustard-Yellow and Old Gold' post, I took to heart many people's lack of success wearing the colour next to their face. So I drafted a simple Peter Pan collar (see my how-to/tutorial here for my method) and used some white and navy spotty cotton to keep the mustard away from my skin tone. 

I really love this mustard top. The colour looks fabulous with my dark blue jeggings. Unfortunately the jersey fabric is so slinky that it shows up the lumps and bumps of the jeggings underneath, but stash busters can't be perfectionists!  

I can foresee a sad day in the future when my breton top is no longer wearable because it'll be too short before long. I'm very pleased to be able to add another dose of stripes into my wardrobe in the form of this batwing top. The anchor fabric that I made the collar from was harvested from a second-hand mens shirt I bought on a stall at a junk fair. The shirt itself was a bit worn and faded in places so I had to find a use for it that required picking and choosing sections rather than using the garment as a whole.

But wait! I still had some of the stripey fabric left! It's not a stash bust if there's a garment's worth remaining, IMO. I've been wanting to make my best mate a garment for a months now as it's been ages since I last made her anything. There wasn't enough of the jersey fabric to make the long sleeves, but I'd been wondering for a while what a T-shirt version of this style might look like. 

I made a bateau/slash neckline bound with the same fabric using the stripes in a different direction. I would have done the same for the the cuffs but there wasn't sufficient fabric to cut them in that direction. In the past I've made Vic lots of tops that have been too short in the body for her. I've finally come to realise that I have a high natural waist and she has a low natural waist, so even though we are more or less the same height, things that finish in a good place on me won't necessarily do so on her. FINALLY I hope I've learnt that lesson by making this top using the same longer length version of the pattern.  

So there we go. Three wearable tops made entirely from stash fabric (and therefore free!), two of which should accommodate my growing belly for a fair few months to come, and about 3.5 metres of fabric no longer clogging up the jersey shelf of my stash. Hurrah!