Modified Santa Fe and Lucky Fabric

This is a story about how I'm lucky and about how I'm not as smart as I think.

Back in February, Meg Awesome Sauce of Cookin' & Craftin' posted a tee made with custom printed fabric from My Fabric Designs. Lucky Pants Me commented on her post and won the giveaway for $25 credit to My Fabric Design. (Insert happy dance.)

Meg rockin' her Bento

I'm no stranger to custom printed fabric. I've used Spoonflower on a few occasions because A) poo emoji fabric, B) DIY logo labels, C) celery, and D) other fun stuff.

My Fabric Designs is essentially the same. Choose from designers' works or upload your own design and pick a substrate.

Then...

magic...

and happy mail arrives.

FUN!

I chose this gorgeous design called Painted Herringbone (theartwerks) and chose modern jersey fabric

I'm very guilty of rarely having a plan for the fabric I buy. I buy fabric because it's pretty and I'm weak. Sew weak. So I didn't know when I bought this what I was gonna make with it. The modern jersey is buttery smooth and drapey. It spoke to me and said, "make a Santa Fe."

I will say I've only ever used the Santa Fe pattern once before and that time I mashed it with Shwin's Day Tripper. So I haven't actually sewn a Santa Fe as designed per the instructions. That's going to be evident here in a bit.

Image credit- Hey June Handmade 

When I mashed this pattern previously, I fused the front and back sleeve pieces together, eliminating the shoulder seam, and creating a more traditional raglan. I think in doing so, I elongated the neckline a little by not accounting entirely for the seam allowances. Anyhow, my neckline came out a bit bigger than I'd love. The pattern as written uses a binding to finish the neckline as opposed to a neckband, but to compensate for the large neck opening, I went with a band.

Love the deep angle on the side insets.

After hemming the sleeves, I found them a teensy bit short. Well, duh, if one actually follows the pattern, the sleeves in view F (and C) have a cuff.

So there you have it. I love this top and the dreamy fabric. It's incredibly wearable, but I made some mistakes along the way. Most sewists like to make their mistakes and adjust for fit by making a muslin. They probably also read the instructions. I just like to sew. And I learn a lot.