I’m not really sure what prompted this, but lately I’ve REALLY been loving these boxy loose shapes on me. Made in a super drapey fabric and cropped just so, I find them really flattering and even more comfortable. It’s funny – the older I get (ya know, this RIPE OLD AGE of 30 lol amirite), the more I find myself comfortable with my body – and the more I’m ok with nto wearing things that are incredibly skintight. Both of those statements seem to contradict each other, but, it is what it is!
The Scout Tee is certainly not a new pattern – not even in my personal arsenal (I made a really fun one last year with some beautiful handwoven fabric, in case you missed it!). But hell, I have loved wearing it! My first version was made with a fabric that made it really boxy, which I liked a lot – but I wanted to see how it would feel in a drapey fabric. Spoiler alert: This is love. This is true love. I already have the next one planned.
This tee is pretty similar to my last one, in terms of construction. I sewed the size 0, and the only modification I made was to deepen the hem to about 2″, which is a good slightly cropped length for me. All the seams are French seams, and the neckline is finished with self bias facing. Overall, this was really fast and easy to put together. Since there are so few pieces – just front, back, sleeve, and that bias piece – it was even quick to cut. Yay!
I love the subtle high-low hem and I think it really benefits from some extra fabric down there to give it more weight. Especially with a fabric this lightweight and floaty!
Anyway, this post is less about the pattern and really about the fabric! What do you think of my AWESOME TROPICAL BIRD PRINTED SILK, huh?! 😀
The fabric is from Contrado, which is a company in the UK that specializes in custom printing – including on fabric! They reached out to me several months ago about trying out some fabric design, and I’ve finally had a chance to make that happen! It was the designing part that tripped me up and slowed me down so much – I’m not much of a designer, and most of my “art” involves direct copies. Tell me that I can design literally any print that I want, and watch the fear fill my eyes haha.
It seriously took me a couple of months to even think of what kind of design to do, but I had seen a few tropical bird prints floating around on RTW stuff and I immediately knew that’s the direction I wanted to take it. I googled around for some images that I liked and played around with them in my image editing software (it’s not anything fancy like Photoshop, just so we’re clear here haha. You could probably use pickmonkey.com to do your edits) until the design looked right. Then it was a matter of uploading the file to the website, making a few more minor tweaks – and that’s it! It was actually really really easy. The hard part is definitely choosing the design.
Narrowing down a fabric choice was also difficult! Contrado offers a massive array of fabric choices – over 75, in fact. From basics (such as cottons, polys, and knits) to fancier stuff (like cashmere !!!). They sent me a swatch pack so I could see all the printed samples, which made things both easier and harder 🙂
The fabric I chose to print on is a beautiful silk satin. It practically drapes like a liquid and it feels really incredible against the skin. I was initially a little worried about it being SO shiny – I generally use the “wrong” side of my silks, as I don’t like really shiny stuff. But since this fabric was printed, the wrong side looked.. well, wrong. I think the nature of this design works with a shiny fabric, although now I am wondering how practical it is to make a summery sleeved top out of white silk… I sweat a lot! Ha! Well I guess I can always yank the sleeves off if it comes down to it 😉
I will admit that this was not the easiest fabric to work with – the silk is quite slippery on the satin side, and there’s not much of a “grab” to the wrong side either (by “grab,” I mean like what you’d feel with a silk crepe). I chose a very simple pattern for this reason, which definitely worked in my favor. I didn’t do any sort of prepping before cutting – no stabilizers or using a rotary cutter or anything like that – and while cutting took a bit longer than it normally does, it wasn’t too terrible. I think when it comes to dealing with silks and other slippery fabrics, cutting is the worst part. Once you get past that point (assuming you cut everything correctly and on-grain), actually sewing the pieces together is relatively painless.
I actually took these photos after wearing and washing the shirt, and you can see how well the colors have held up (as well as the back wrinkles – sorry about that!). Speaking of washing, I get this question ALL the time, so it bears repeating – I wash all my silk on cold in the washing machine, and hang it to dry (it’s safe in the drier as I pre-wash and use the drier, but I hate ironing so hanging to dry is the way to go!). As long as you pre-wash your silk before cutting into it, it’s safe to wash it in the machine!
One last thing – in case you were curious 🙂
GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.
Time to talk giveaway! The folks at Contrado are offering a whopping £100 voucher to use on their site, to print whateverrrrr your desires on your dream yardage! Further, this giveaway is open WORLDWIDE, so you don’t need to be a UK resident to enter! (My US folks – as of today’s currency exchange rates, that comes out to approximately $146.29, fyi!)
To enter the giveaway:
1. You need to LIKE the Contrado Facebook page. Show them your love and support!
2. Comment on this post and tell me what you’d design, and what you’d make out of said fabric.
As I said, this giveaway is open WORLDWIDE and the winner will be chosen by a random number generator. I will close the comments one week from today, on TUESDAY, MAY 10, 2016 8AM CST.
GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.
Good luck, everyone! ♥
Note: This fabric was provided to me by Contrado, in exchange for this giveaway post! Who’s gonna be the lucky winner? 😉
LLADYBIRD 